152 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



In the writings of this period, we first find ideas for protecting 

 and sheltering dehcate plants, which a little later developed into 

 orangeries and greenhouses, and finally into the hothouse and stove. 

 Sir Hugh Piatt, especially ;, in the second part of the Garden of 

 Eden, not printed until 1660, frequently mentions the possibility 

 of growing plants in the house, and utilizing the fires in the 

 rooms to force gilliflowers and carnations into early bloom. 

 " I have known Mr. Jacob of the Glassehouse," he writes, " to 

 have carnations all the winter by the benefit of a room that 

 was neare his glassehouse fire." Holinshed, while praising 

 the orchards of his day, says, " I have seen capers, orenges 

 and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here," but 

 he does not say how they were preserved from cold. Gerard 

 also describes both oranges and lemons, but he is too honest 

 to pretend that they grow in England. A few oranges, however, 

 were successfully reared in this country. " I bring to your 

 consideration," writes Parkinson, in the treatise on the Orchard, 

 '^ the Orenge alone, without mentioning Citron or Lemmon 

 trees, in regard of the experience we have seen made of them 

 in divers places, For the orenge tree hath abiden with some 

 extraordinary looking [after it] and tending of it, when as 

 neither of the other would by any means be preserved any 

 long time," " They must," he goes on to say, be kept in 

 " great square boxes, and lift there to and fro by iron hooks 

 in the sides ... to place them in an house or close gallery 

 in for the winter time . . . but no tent or mean provision will 

 preserve them." Piatt suggests that if planted against a 

 concave-shaped wall, lined with lead or tin to cause reflexion, 

 they might " happily bear their fruit in our cold Clymate. 

 Quaere, if these walls did stand so conveniently, as they might 

 also be continually warmed with kitchen fires ; as serving for 

 Backs unto your chimneys, if so they should not likewise finde 

 some little furtherance in their ripening." 



The experiment of growing lemons was tried by Lord Burghle}'. 

 There are some interesting letters extant in which the history of 

 the way in which the tree was procured is preserved. Cecil wrote 

 to Thomas Windebank, who was then in Paris, March 24th and 

 25th, 1561-62, saying he had heard from his son Thomas, that 



