40 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



ounce and a half of common garden earth added to it, a 

 third was given an equal quantity of garden mould, and 

 a fourth was kept on " Hyde Park water distilled." The 

 results in growth, and the quantity of water absorbed, 

 were carefully noted at the end of the time. 



When Queen Caroline conceived the idea of throw- 

 ing the ponds in Hyde Park into one, and making a 

 sheet of water, the school of " natural " or " landscape " 

 gardening was becoming the rage, Bridgeman, a well- 

 known garden designer, who had charge of the royal 

 gardens, has the credit of having invented the " ha-ha " 

 or sunk fence, and thus led the way for merging gardens 

 into parks. Kent, who followed him, went still further. 

 He, Horace Walpole said, " leaped the fence, and saw 

 that all Nature was a garden." The fashions in garden 

 design soon change, and the work of a former generation 

 is quickly obliterated. William III. brought with him 

 the fashion of Dutch gardening, and laid out Kensington 

 Gardens in that style. Switzer, writing twenty-five years 

 later, says the fault of the Dutch gardeners was " the 

 Pleasure Gardens being stuffed too thick with Box"; 

 they " used it to a fault, especially in England, where 

 we abound in so much good Grass and Gravel." London 

 and Wise, very famous nursery gardeners, who made 

 considerable changes at Hampton Court, and laid out 

 the grounds of half the country seats in England, had 

 charge of Kensington Palace Gardens, and housed the 

 " tender greens " during the winter in their nurseries 

 hard by. These celebrated Brompton nurseries were so 

 vast that the Kensington plants took up " but little 

 room in comparison with" those belonging to the firm. 

 Queen Mary took great interest in the new gardens. 

 " This active Princess lost no time, but was either 



