CHAPTER I. 



Before considering the various features which go to the making of a modern 

 garden, it will be necessary to take a rapid survey of the history of the art of Land- 

 scape Architecture so far as it has any immediate bearing upon our subject, and 

 provides a precedent on which to work. 



The existence of gardens may be taken as being coeval with the whole period 

 of man's growth from utter barbarism to present-day civilization ; but, for our immediate 

 purpose, it is sufficient to deal with the development of the art in our own country. 

 Those who are interested in the archaeological aspect of the subject will find it very 

 fully dealt with in London's " Encyclopaedia of Gardening." 



The evolutionary lines along which advance is made in every art demand that a 

 thorough knowledge of precedent shall form a prominent part of the training of the 

 expert, and although it has been said with truth that landscape architecture suffers, 

 in comparison with other arts, from the paucity of its precedent, this merely means that 

 the planning of the modern garden is a young art capable of much development, and 

 does not excuse a lack of knowledge of all that has been done by masters of the craft 

 in this country during . the last four centuries. 



With Roman and Norman gardens it is not necessary to deal, further than to 

 say that they probably formed the basis of many medieval monastic pleasaunces. Up 

 to the close of the Tudor period, when the renaissance in all forms of art had taken 

 such a firm hold upon Europe, garden design, except in connection with Royal Palaces, 

 like so many other branches of knowledge, was almost entirely in monastic hands, and 

 most of the existing records of the achievements of the monks are contained in the 

 illustrations with which they embellished their illuminated manuscripts, and incidental 

 references to the beauties of their parterres and pleached alleys in the metrical romances 

 of the period. 



From the time of Henry II., however, the citizens of London had gardens to their villas, 

 while later, in the reign of Henry V., the gardens at Windsor Castle, which he knew 

 well from his imprisonment there, were thus described by King James I. of Scotland 

 in " The Quair " : 



1 Now was there maide fast by the touris wall 

 A garden faire, and in the corneris set 

 Ane herbere grene, with wandis long and small 

 Railit about, and so with treeis set 

 Was all the place and hawthorn hedges knet, 

 That lyfe was non, walkyng there for bye 

 That myght within scarce any wight espye. 



So thick the bewis and the leves grene 



Beschudit all the alleyes that there were, 



And myddis every herebere might be sene 



The scharp grene swete jenepere, 



Growing so fair with branches here and there, 



That as it semyt to a lyfe without, 



The bewis spred the herbere all about." 



Knowledge 

 of precedent 

 necessary. 



Roman and 



Norman 



Gardens. 



