INTRODUCTION. 



came elaboration and magnificence, and the extent 

 and splendour of the later classic gardens of Italy 

 were emulated, but not excelled, by the masters of 

 the Renaissance period. So minute are the younger 

 Pliny's descriptions of his two gardens that they have 

 been reconstructed on paper by more than one 

 archasologist. And here, curiously enough, amid the 

 rich triumph of artifice and geometry, we find the 

 highly-civilised man's dawning desire for Nature. 

 The grounds of the Tusculan Villa wanted nothing of 

 the choicest devices and trappings of formalism. 

 There are portico and terrace, garden-house and 

 alcove, fountain and statue, trim open parterre and 

 shady alley of cypress and palm tree. The variety 

 and curiousness of water and topiary works are 

 immense, " the box is cut into a thousand different 

 forms," here a marble basin is "so artfully contrived 

 that it is always full without overflowing," and there 

 " is a fountain which is incessantly emptying and 

 filling." Such is the general character, and of such 

 details is almost the whole of the long description 

 composed. But a single sentence strikes a different 

 note. " On a sudden, in the midst of this elegant 

 regularity, you are surprised with an imitation of the 

 negligent beauties of rural Nature." If we compare 

 this with Horace Walpole's description of Bridgeman, 

 who " still adhered much to strait walks with high 

 clipt hedges " but " diversified by wilderness and 

 with loose groves of oak, though still within sur- 

 rounding hedges," we shall 'conclude that the 

 English natural school began where the younger 

 Pliny left off. Until that day, indeed, Pliny's 

 influence had been continuous over the art ot 

 gardening in England, for he was read by Norman, 

 nay, even by Saxon monk, for the Herbal of fourth 

 century Apuleius was founded on his works, and was 

 translated into Anglo-Saxon. He thus influenced 

 knowledge, if not also taste, in those early mediaeval 

 days when horticulture was in its infancy, and 

 when gardens were small and infrequent, plain and 

 utilitarian. 



Shelter and defence are implied by the 

 etymology of our words yard and garden, and such 

 were the leading characteristics of the little enclosed 

 spaces devoted by our Saxon ancestors to such plant 

 culture as then obtained. For these wort-yards, or 

 orchards, it is not so much to the castle as to the 

 monastery that we must look. At each there was 

 always the cultivation of some few fruits and vege- 

 tables and physic herbs, even before the advent of the 

 more energetic and knowledgeable Normans, with 

 whom, if absent before, came something of the spirit 

 of amenity of the enjoyment to be derived from 

 the beauty of the rose and the lily, as 

 well as from the usefulness of the apple and the 

 onion. An anecdote of William Rufus brings this 

 home to us. Of the Abbey of Romsey in Hampshire, 

 Christina, of the blood of the former Royal House 

 of England, was Abbess, and with her was her young 

 niece Matilda, afterwards to be Henry I.'s English 

 Queen. Rufus wished to see this maid ; but to 

 such meeting, considering his morals, the Abbess was 

 averse, and so Rufus, we are told in a contemporary 

 account, pretended that he had merely come " to 

 look at the roses and other flowering herbs." We 

 thus get clear proof not only of their presence in the 

 nunnery garden, but that to come and see them was 

 reckoned a plausible excuse for a visit. Upon such 

 hints and casual mention as this, do we depend for 



information on the subject at this time ; but before 

 the twelfth century closes horticulture enters the 

 literary stage, and in Alex. Neckam's " De Naturis 

 Rerum " (a kind of contemporary encyclopaedia), 

 Chapter CLXVI. deals with gardens. Neckam was 

 born at St. Albans in September, 1157, and that 

 we have such precise date for this event we 

 owe to the fact that on the same day Richard 

 Lion Heart was born at Windsor, and that Neckam's 

 mother nursed them both, reserving her right breast 

 for the Prince by way of precedence. The boy learnt 

 so quickly in the Abbey school that the monks made 

 him their schoolmaster at Dunstable almost before 

 he reached manhood, and he was a professor at Paris 

 University when he was twenty-three. In 1186 

 he determined to enter a monastery ; but his offer 

 to the Abbot of his native St. Albans being answered 

 by a pun on his name, he took offence and went to 

 Cirencester, where he became Abbot in 1213. As an 

 author, he was a compiler rather than an observer or 

 a thinker, and his knowledge of gardens was drawn 

 from writers of another age and climate rather than 

 from practical experience in his own country, and we 

 thus find dates included among the fruit which a 

 "noble garden gives you." Classic authors, such 

 as Pliny, were studied for cultural directions 

 rather than for information on laying out, and 

 so Neckam is silent on the subject of garden 

 design, though he comments on what he con- 

 sidered the voluptuous expense in superfluous 

 building which had set in in his day, and 

 condemns the vanity of those who were raising 

 "towers threatening the stars." Not only has he no 

 ideas as to garden architecture, he has none on garden 

 disposition, and his lists of plants show a most 

 haphazard mixture of tree and bulb, fruit and flower. 

 Of the last he mentions roses and lilies, the purple 

 flag and the yellow gladiolus as customary ; but why- 

 he singles out the cucumber, the poppy and the 

 narcissus as " giving nobility to the garden " we art- 

 left to guess, or perhaps to believe dogmatically as 

 the final word of the sage. There is nothing 

 especially monastic in Neckam's gardening descrip- 

 tion and advice, and, except that laymen, as a rule, 

 could not read in his day, we should rather judge 

 that it was for laymen that he wrote. But the 

 monks still remained the chief gardeners. They had 

 frequent and wide Continental relations, abundant 

 leisure and comparative security. The sites of 

 their buildings, low down, in fertile and sheltered 

 spots, with ample and wide-spreading enclosures, 

 were, moreover, far better adapted to gardening 

 than the position of the castle, high set on 

 an exposed knoll, or rising sheer out of a marsh. 

 No wonder,- then, that the bortulanus was an 

 important monastic official, duly appointed to 

 supervise apple orchard and vineyard, flower plot 

 and herb border. Monkish diet, so largely 

 composed of vegetable food, called for ample fruit 

 and vegetable culture. Their accustomed office of 

 ministering to the bodies, as well as to the souls, 

 of their sick neighbours encouraged the growth of 

 the physic garden, while the habit of using flowers 

 for decoration in churches and in open-air pro- 

 cessions was an incentive to the large production 

 of bloom. Moreover, the contemplative life meant 

 walking and sitting in such enclosures, and the 

 straight path and the sequestered bench would have 

 their importance ; so that rose bush and iris soon 



