108 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



arcades, already referred to, and does not seem to be at all 

 a new idea of Bacon's. Thomas Hill"^ discusses the various 

 modes of fencing round a garden. A paling of " drie thorne " 

 and willow he calls a " dead or rough inclosure," He refers 

 to the Romans for examples of the alternative of digging a 

 ditch to surround the garden, but " the general way " is a 

 ^' natural inclosure,'' a hedge of " white thorne artely laide : 

 in a few years with diligence it waxeth so thicke and strong, 

 that hardly any person can enter into the ground, sauing by 

 the garden-door ; j'et in sundrie garden groundes, the hedges 

 [are] framed with the privet tree, although far weaker in 

 resistance, which at this day are made the stronger through 

 yearly cutting, both aboue and by the sides." He gives a 

 quaint method for planting a hedge. The gardener is to 

 collect the berries of briar, brambles, white-thorne, gooseberries 

 and barberries, steep the seeds in a mixture of meal, and 

 set them to keep until the spring, in an old rope, "a long 

 worn roape . . . being in a manner starke rotten." "Then, in 

 the spring, to plant the rope in two furrows, a foot and a 

 half deep, and three feet apart. . . . The seedes thus covered 

 with diligence shall appeare within a month, either more or 

 less " — " which in a few years will grow to a most strong 

 defence of the garden or field." These old gardeners had 

 great faith in all their operations, and but rarely in their works 

 do we find any allusion to possible failure ! 



Yews were much employed for hedges, but more for walks 

 and shelter within the gardens, than to form the outer enclosure. 

 In the larger gardens there were two or three gates in the walls, 

 well designed, with handsome stone piers surmounted with balls 

 or the owner's crest, and wrought-iron gates of elaborate pattern ; 

 or else there was one fine gate at the principal entrance, the 

 rest being smaller and less pretentious, merely " a planched 

 gate," t or " little door." The main principle of a garden was 

 still that it should be a "garth," a yard, or enclosure ; the idea of 

 such a thing as a practically unenclosed garden had not, as yet. 



* Gavdeney' s Lahvrinih, 1608. 



t Measure for Measure, act iv. scene I. 



