AVI. 



GARDENS OLD AND 



a fanciful garden of his own, with the famous grotto under 

 the Teddington Road. 



Perhaps the best feature that remains to these days of 

 such old gardens is the yew hedge, that dominant mark of 

 many English pleasaunces, which gives them a particular 

 distinction, and favours that character of enclosure which 

 has been alluded to as almost essential in good garden design. 

 Evelyn claimed the credit of bringing the yew into fashion, 

 " as well for a defence as for a succedaneum to cypress, 

 whether in hedges or pyramids, conic spires, bowls, and 

 what other shapes. I do again name the yew for hedges 

 as preferable for beauty and a stiff defence to any plant 

 I have seen." There is still at Albury a hedge loft, high 

 and a quarter of a mile long, said to have been designed by 

 Evelyn for the Earl of Arundel, and there are yew hedges at 

 Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, believed to have been 

 planted by Richard Hooker in 1595, and now about I4ft. high 



Here was a change of view that was quite fundamental. 

 With a sunk fence instead of a hedge, and wild nature taken 

 into the gardening plan, the sequestered pleasure ground 

 that had delighted the old Englishman was swept away. There 

 had been foreshadowing of the change that was to come, not 

 only in the pages of Milton and Tasso, but in the writings of 

 many observers. Sir Henry Wotton had remarked "a certain 

 contrariety between building and gardening, for as fabrics 

 should be regular, so gardens should be irregular, or at 

 least be cast into a very wild regularity." Sidney, too, 

 brings the hero of "Arcadia" into a 

 "neither field, garden, nor orchard; or, 

 both field, garden, and orchard." The 

 style had soon a great vogue in England, 

 designer who chiefly worked the change, followed by 

 Brown and many more. Walpole ascribed to Kent genius in 

 striking out the " great system from the twilight of imperfect 



place that was 



rather, it was 



new landscape 



Kent was the 



THE CRAFTSMAN'S WORK AT COMPTON BEAUCHAMP, BERKSHIRE. 



"Country Life.' 



and loft, thick. This book illustrates many notable yew 

 and other hedges which derive their character from those 

 times. 



Walpole was as firm as Pope in his opposition to the 

 formal style, and, in writing on " Modern Gardening," he 

 makes a remark which is extremely important for an under- 

 standing of the change then beginning. Hitherto enclosure by 

 hedges, terraces, or balustrades had been considered essential, 

 but Walpole thought it a " capital stroke " that walls for 

 boundaries began to be destroyed, and that, instead of a 

 hedge, a sunk fence, the ha-ha, was invented. " No sooner 

 was this simple enchantment made than levelling, mowing, 

 and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park 

 without the sunk fence was to be harmonised with the lawn 

 within, and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its 

 prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country 

 without." 



essays." " He leaped the fence, and saw that all Nature was 

 d garden." Landscape, which had hitherto been without, 

 was now to be brought within. " The great principles on 

 which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. 

 Groups of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn ; 

 evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the 

 champain, and where the view was less fortunate, or so much 

 exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts by 

 thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest 

 scene more enchanting by reserving it to a farther advance of 

 the spectator's step. Thus, selecting favourite objects, and 

 veiling deformities by screens of plantation, sometimes allowing 

 the rudest waste to add its foil to the richest theatre, he 

 realised the compositions of the greatest masters in painting. 

 Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste 

 as an architect could bestow immediate termination. His 

 buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works 



