4 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



have its own flowers, and he values flowers, as 

 Milton seems to have done, more for fragrance 

 than for colour. And the variety of flowers 

 of the old garden was, even in comparatively 

 small places, far greater than we might at first 

 suppose. Thomas Tusser, who was then a 

 Suffolk farmer, published his Points of Husbandry 

 in 1557, and he gives a long list of the plants 

 he grew for the kitchen, for salads, for physic, 

 and of flowers for " windows and pots." The 

 New Shakespeare Society, too, has lately been 

 reprinting Harrison's Description of England, first 

 printed in 1577, and he, in a chapter on gar- 

 dening, describes his own "little plot, void of 

 all cost in keeping," as having, "in the varietie 

 of simples," " verie neere three hundred of one 

 sort and other contained therein, no one of them 

 being common or usually to be had." 



Two of the most celebrated gardens of those 

 days were Nonsuch and Cobham. Nonsuch 

 seems to have had a number of statues, and a 

 wonderful fountain, with Diana and Actseon ; 

 and its lilac-trees are particularly mentioned. 



