136 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi 



of uninterrupted grass has always been an 

 essential feature in formal garden design. 



In the older garden, grass-work would in- 

 clude all artificial works intended to be turfed — 

 such as mounts, grass walks and banks, bowling- 

 greens, and theatres. The mount was a common 

 feature in English gardens as late as the middle 

 of the seventeenth century. They were the 

 natural result of the walled-in garden, in so far 

 as they provided the place from which the 

 owner could look abroad beyond his walls, and 

 were probably formed by the earth excavated for 

 the house. In the larger gardens there were 

 artificial mounts of considerable height raised at 

 some distance from the house, and usually 

 turfed and planted with trees. At the top 

 might be a banqueting -house. Kip's view of 

 Dunham Massie, in Cheshire, shows a circular 

 mount in four stages or terraces. Each stage 

 was fenced in with a pole-hedge, and at the top 

 was a garden-house with four gables. Leland 

 {Itinerary^ p. 66) says that at Wresehall, in 

 Yorkshire, " in the orchardes were mountes, 

 opere topiarii wTithen about with degrees like 

 turninges of cockell-shells, to cum to the top 

 without paine." It is possible that mounts of 

 this kind were suggested by a curious descrip- 

 tion of a medicinal garden given by Olivier de 

 Serres, and referred to by Markham. De Serres 

 gives two designs for these " montagnetes " (as 

 he calls them) or mounts. One was to be 



