228 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



and Philip ; who died in 1669, seems to have encouraged Meager 

 in his work, as indeed Meager adds he assisted all his " other 

 servants that had any inclination or endeavour to the Practise 

 of Good Husbandry." Meager probably shows us a type of 

 the quiet old-fashioned " neatly-ordered " gardens, throughout 

 England. The quaint view of Netherton, in Cornwall, is from a 

 sketch made by Edmond Prideaux, about 1712, of a garden of 

 this kind. Coryton Park,"* in Devonshire, is a good example 

 still existing. It was laid out about 1680, and when alterations 

 were made in 1756, the old garden was left as a kitchen-garden, 

 and is still untouched. The old wall, which divides the upper 

 or new from the lower or older garden, is of a quaint zig-zag 

 form ; the simple lines of the rest of the garden might have been 

 taken from Meager's book. A path all round, two large square 

 parterres, two smaller ones, with two corners curved to allow 

 room for a path round a pond and fountain, and across the centre 

 of each plat, a clipped yew-hedge following the same curve, and 

 terminating at the edge of the gravel path with a cypress-tree, 

 two statues, a sundial, and opposite the fountain against the outer 

 wall an old garden house or orangery, compose the design. 



This kind of plan was already becoming old-fashioned, and 

 the tendency was to make larger gardens than could be kept up 

 in a formal style. Sir William Temple, in 1685, saw the danger 

 when he wrote, "As to the size of a garden which will perhaps in 

 time grow extravagant among us, I think from four or five to 

 seven acres is as much as any gentleman need design/' His 

 own garden at Sheen was not large, but beautifully kept ; of this 

 wrote Evelyn, in 1688: "the wall fruit trees are most exquisitely 

 nail'd and train'd, far better than I ever noted." His " Retreat " 

 later in life in Surrey he called Moor Park after the favourite 

 garden of his youth, Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, which he 

 describes so delightfully, as it was, he says, " the perfectest figure 

 of a garden I ever saw."t At the new Moor Park he laid out a 

 garden in the Dutch style. It is not to be wondered at, that the 

 statesman who negotiated the Triple Alliance should prefer the 



* Belonging to Rev. Marwood Tucker. 



f Sir Wm. Temple Upon the Garden of Epicurus or of Gardening in the 

 year 1685, printed in his Miscellaneous Works. 



