230 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



The first Lord Holland was much concerned 

 about his Garden, and was constantly writing to 

 a friend, Peter Collinson, about it : "If you will 

 permit us, Lady Caroline has a thousand Questions 

 to ask you about Flowers and I not much fewer 

 about Plants." Then, in 1750, he writes to the 

 same friend, saying he wants to " raise a Quantity 

 of spreading Cypress from seed, also Scarlet Oak 

 and Chestnuts " ; and his friend writes back to 

 remind him in March to sow " Candy Tuft, Rock 

 Stock, Venus' Looking-Glass " such delightfully 

 old-fashioned plants. 



It was in 1767 that Lord Holland got his great 

 friend, Charles Hamilton, of Pain's Hill, to lay out 

 the Grounds of Holland House. Horace Walpole 

 mentions Hamilton in his well-known essay on 

 " Modern Gardening." Both Walpole and Hamil- 

 ton were aiming at the same goal viz., the natural 

 school of Gardening and could, therefore, afford to 

 be good friends ! For the making of Gardens has 

 been, like many better and worse pleasures, the 

 cause of more than one quarrel. Even now 

 partisans of formal or natural Gardens are apt to 

 become too eager for friendship. 



Hamilton introduced various American trees into 

 the Garden and also some curious Oaks, and he is 

 supposed to have suggested the turfing of the 

 Green Lane, though the original idea of shutting 

 up the road to form this Avenue was the first Lady 



