46 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1881. 



gardening, viz. : the geometric system or set formal plan in which 

 their grounds were laid out, and the topiarian art as it was called, 

 or the custom of cutting and pruning shrubs and trees into all 

 sorts of fantastic shapes. This custom was as universal as it was 

 ugly and was copied from the Romans in the more modern 

 Italian garden. 



In the Italian garden, however, much more grandeur was af- 

 fected than in the Roman. The Italian style deliglited in balus- 

 trades, terraces, magnificent flights of stone steps, alcoves, niches, 

 lofty clipped hedges and recesses for sculpture. It was an 

 architectural affair. 



French gardening was copied from the Italian style and con- 

 spicuous for its attempt at magnificence and architectural effort. 

 Gardening in France received but little attention, or at any rate 

 did not approach anything like perfection until the seventeenth 

 century. Although pleasure grounds had before this been formed 

 at Fontainbleau by Francis I. in imitation of those he had seen 

 in Italy. 



In the seventeenth century the beautiful grounds adjoining the 

 Tuileries Palace were designed by Le !Notre. From that date 

 followed the design and laying out of the many beautiful gar- 

 dens, parks, drives and promenades in which Paris and its envi- 

 rons abound. Sculpture, basins of water and fountains with a 

 profusion of flowers are to be seen on every hand. The Champ 

 d'Elysee with its trees, fountains and parterres of flowers was for 

 a long time the pride of Paris. But with the laying out of the 

 Bois de Boulogne, the boast of Napoleon that he would make 

 tliat great metropolis the most beautiful city in the world gave 

 promise of fulfilment. 



Dutcli gardening was in some respects an imitation of the 

 Italian but without its magnificence. There was the same stiff- 

 ness and whimsicality or perhaps an exaggeration of it, while they 

 followed the same barbarous topiarian custom of pruning trees 

 and shrubs. They also attempted ornamentation by water, inter- 

 secting their gardens with canals. But these canals being filled 

 for the most part with stagnant water renders the eflect anything 

 but pleasing. But though little can be said for the taste of the 

 Dutch in the arrangement of their gardens they excel in a 

 knowledge of horticulture. They are especially devoted to the 

 cultivation of all the bulbous plants. In the seventeenth cen- 

 tury an insane rage took possession of them for the cultivation 

 of the tulip — to such an extent was it carried that it was named 

 tulipomania — fabulous sums were asked and received for single 

 specimens of tliis gaudy flower and fortunes lost and won in 

 speculations upon them. 



