258 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



in not only required skilful growing, but careful arrangement and 

 classification, and Philip Miller did much good work in both ways. 



Not only were plants coming in from America, but new 

 treasures found their way to England from other parts of the 

 Old World also. William Sherard, a learned botanist and 

 friend of Ray and Sloane, and patron of Catesby, was, in 1702, 

 appointed Consul at Smyrna, and during his stay there, until 

 1718, employed much of his time in making a collection of 

 the plants of Greece and Asia Minor. His younger brother, 

 James, at Eltham in Kent, had a famous garden, and 

 cultivated many of the new exotics sent home by William. 

 Besides foreign importations, gardeners at home added to the 

 number of cultivated plants by trying experiments of hybridising, 

 producing double varieties, and more especially variegation. 

 Such things as variegated "silver-striped," or " gold-blotched," 

 lilacs, syringa, privet, phillyrea or maple, were great favourites. 



Improved methods of heating and building conservatories and 

 hot-houses made it possible not only to shelter " tender exotics " 

 and grow fruit, but to force vegetables. Attempts were made 

 to force grapes, and the experiment was tried by the Duke of 

 Rutland at Belvoir. Bradley and Switzer describe the process, 

 which was to " build ovens at certain distances at the back of 

 walls, and keeping them continually warm from January till 

 the Sun's Power is sufficient of itself to maintain the growth 

 of the plants growing against such walls .... whereby the 

 latest kinds of grapes are commonly ripen'd about July or 

 August." Bradley adds a caution which takes one a step further 

 towards a modern vinery, " Take notice, that during the cold 

 season, when these Fruits are forced to shoot unseasonably, the 

 Plants must be cover J d with glasses to prevent the injuries 

 they might receive from frosts." * At Lord Derby's, at Knowsley 

 Hall, near Liverpool, there was another method of heating a 

 wall to produce early grapes, thus described by a traveller in 

 1732: "An hot wall here for Vines, ye wall is built hollow, 

 or you may say two walls are run up just together at each 

 end are Stoves where you put in the coal & there is a chimney 



* Bradley, Works of Nature, 1721. 



