XXXIV. 



INTRODUCTION. 



gardener whose judgement may he relied on " and 

 " not trust to the ideals of a green fancy, lest they 

 employ their pains to purchase repentance, as I know 

 many have done." For the rest he has nothing new. 

 His knots are the same as had often previously 

 appeared. His boundary hedges are to be grown 

 against carpenter's work, but it is a departure to 

 find Phyllyrea and Pyracantha mentioned for the 

 purpose. The other necessary piece of garden 

 architecture is " a handsome Octangular Somer- 

 house roofed everyway and finely painted with 

 Landskips and other Conceits." This manner of 

 frescoing the interior walls of garden buildings was 

 used in Italy, and that it came North early we know 

 from the " Colloquies " of Erasmus, where a garden 

 is described as having galleries whose floors, even, were 

 painted to imitate grass and flowers, while the walls 

 represented woods, " all exprest to the Life and so 

 for the Birds too." Much of this work was also 

 done in France, and not even confined to roofed 

 buildings, for when Evelyn was at Rueil and saw 

 "the Arch of Constantine painted on a wall in oyle, 

 as large as the real one at Rome so well don that 

 even a man skill'd in painting may mistake it for 

 stone and sculpture," he declared himself " infinitely 

 taken with this agreeable cheate," especially when he 

 was told that, owing to the clever way the sky 

 and hills were painted in the opening of the 

 arch, "swallows and other birds, thinking to fly 

 through, have dashed themselves against the 

 Wall." England, however, never seems to have 

 greatly favoured this very theatrical method of 

 gardening. " As for storied Works upon Walls, I 

 doubt our Clime be too yeilding and moist for such 

 Garnishments," was Sir Henry Wotton's opinion, 

 though he deems it appropriate to have "Landskips 

 and Boscages and such wild Works in open 

 Terraces or in Summer-Houses," and from him, 

 no doubt, Rea copied the idea. He must not be 

 mistaken for a better-known contemporary of very 

 similar name. John Ray, the son of a Braintree 

 blacksmith, went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and 

 then became a lecturer in both Creek and mathe- 

 matics. But he specially distinguished himself as a 

 naturalist and undertook a systematic description of 

 the plant world, and his works on the subject were 

 for long accepted authorities on the scientific side of 

 botany and gardening. The cultural side, however, 

 was more and more written on by practical gardeners 

 such as Rea. Of these was Leonard Meager, gardener 

 to a Northamptonshire squire, who encouraged his 

 experiments in the art of gardening. Hence he 

 developed into an author, and his " English 

 Gardener," first published in 1670, went through 

 eleven editions in fifty years, additions being made to 

 it by " a Lover of this Princely Diversion and 

 Profitable Recreation," who especially went in for 

 " rare curiosities " and " secrets known but to a very 

 few," such as " To make a Peach Tree bear with 

 writing on the fruit." The simple process of writing 

 anything you liked on the kernel in vermilion ami 

 white of egg and then sowing it would eventually 

 result in " the words in a lesser or greater measure" 

 appearing on the peaches. It would be very decidedly 

 the " lesser measure " which we should expect. 

 Meager, himself, tells us little new on the subject 

 of garden design. His "Garden of Pleasure " is laid 

 out with the "divers Forms of Knots and Plots" to 

 which previous writers have accustomed us. "Ilysop, 



Thyme, Germander, and Gilded Marjoram, grass cut 

 off, Periwinkle cut off, Rosemary, Lavender, Sage," are 

 among the plants he suggests for his knot-making, 

 but " Dutch or French box is the handsomest, the 

 most durable and the cheapest to keep." The next 

 gardener authors, London and Wise, who had the 

 then celebrated Brompton nurseries and the care and 

 ordering of the Royal Gardens, agreed with Meager 

 on this point, and the great semi-circular parterre at 

 Hampton Court was all done by them in box for 

 William III., and though Anne, disliking the smell, 

 had it all rooted up, it was afterwards replanted, and 

 everywhere, down to our own day, has remained the 

 popular plant both for elaborate knotting and for 

 simple bordering. 



London and Wise, as being at the head of their 

 profession, led the van and catered tor the wealthy. 

 They were the English representatives of the French 

 School of Le Notre. But though this mode was 

 eagerly adopted by great men as consorting well 

 with the Palladian palaces which they were erecting, 

 the " private gentleman " still kept very much 

 within the modest limits suggested by Rea, and 

 devoted himself to intensive rather than extensive 

 culture. These were the days of "rarities," of the 

 tulip mania, of " exoticks eagerly sought for," whose 

 non-deciduous section is most highly esteemed, and 

 no known cultural care omitted by those who pass 

 as " masters of curious greens." Warmed and 

 well-windowed rooms were erected for their winter 

 storage, and soon developed into stately orangeries. 

 The orange tree had for some time been intro- 

 duced, Henrietta Maria having had forty-two at 

 Wimbledon which the Parliamentary surveyors 

 valued at /,ro apiece, while "one Lemon tree 

 bearing great and very large lemons together with 

 the box that it grows in and the earth and materials 

 therein feeding the same " they set down at /,2O. 

 There are ancient orange trees now at Lydney Park 

 which appear in old wills, and though the tradition that 

 dates them from the sixteenth century and connects 

 them with Admiral Winter and the Spanish Armada 

 exaggerates their age, there is no doubt that 

 they belong at least to the period of the old manor 

 house lately pulled down, which was in the 

 William III. style. London citizens became great 

 gardeners, having their country houses largely in 

 the Enfield neighbourhood, where Defoe mentions 

 several remarkable ones, and where to-day we see 

 them and their fine old garden walls and wrought- 

 iron grilles disappearing one by one to make room 

 for rows of suburban tenements. But the wealthy 

 London merchant often went further afield, and even 

 at Blyth, in Nottinghamshire, Celia Fiennes visits one 

 who had " a very Sweete House and gardens and 

 grounds. . . . The gardens are very neate and 

 after the London Mode of gravel and grass walks 

 and Mount, and the squaires with dwarfes and 

 Cyprus, ffirre and all sorts of greens and fruit 

 trees, its very ffruitefull I Eate good fruite 

 there." Such were the lesser gardens of the close 

 of the seventeenth century, and their sparse survivors 

 are well represented in this volume. The delightful 

 terraces of St. Catherine's Court (page 135) very 

 likely date from the time of its porch, that is, from 

 the reign of Charles I., and the somewhat similar 

 gardens at Canons Ashby were probably first laid out 

 then, though extended and altered with the house 

 about the year 1710. The Llangedwyn terraces 



