THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



was b ut the centre and starting-point of a great decorative scheme. 



Xe~lNr6tre undoubtedly induced English gardeners to enlarge their \ 

 ideas of garden-making, and taught them some things which they 

 did not know before ; though naturally they had not many oppor- 

 tunities such as were offered at Badminton of showing how ready 

 they were to accept his principles of design. 



As a matter of fact the great gardens in the French fashion were 

 not numerou s, and the ordinary country gentleman continued during 

 the seve nteenth century, and part of the eighteenth, to use most of. 

 the earlier devices and most of the traditional formalities. He did 

 his laying-out, perhaps, on__a somewhat more generous scale and 

 with a view to mor e sumptuous effects ; he adopted, not always 

 discreetly, some of the novelties of the French method; but if 

 occasionally he inclined rather too readily towards fountains and 

 statues and pretentious avenues, he more often r emained faithful to 

 the knots and wildernesses, th e rectangular divisions, the evenly- 

 spac ed paths, and the architectural erhbeTIishments which had' 

 pleas ed his ancestors. The ideas imported from abroad had not 

 destroyed the influence of such writers as Gervase Markham, and 

 even in such a book as the " Systema Hortlculturae, or Art of 



_^Gardening," written by John Worlidge, and published in 1677, 

 when the Le Notre fashion was in the ascendant, t he formal m anner 

 sanctioned by long custom is advocated with scarcely any alteration. 

 In the reigns of William and Mary and Anne some modifications 

 were introduced into the art of gardening, but they changed details 

 rather than main principles. From Holland there came with 

 William and Mary that variation of the Renaissance manner which 

 is known as Dutch gardening, a very evident descent from the 

 expansiveness of Le Notre, and in many respects a parody of the r 

 Italian wor k. The Dutch love of quaintness had brought about an 

 exaggeration of the ancient device of clipping trees into purely 

 artificial forms, and as a result of this exaggeration a practice which 

 had been sanctified by centuries of use in England and abroad was 

 reduced to an absurdity. The topiary work which w as executed in 

 English wardens in the earKer years of the eightcentn cc nturv^was 

 too often without dignity or taste — ^merely extravagant and ridiculQUS.__ 

 It show ed the degeneration of' the gardener's art., and marked a_ 

 defi nite decay in the feehng for restful simpl icity which had- 

 governeH fhe layJI tg^^Of so many of the older places. 

 But this degenerate art did not lack appreciation : there was a wide 

 demand for fantastic additions to the garden, and this demand was 

 supplied by many firms, like that of London and Wise at Chelsea, 



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