.S7-; I 'F.XTKEXTH C 'EXTC 'R ] '. 175 



surpassed. Holinshed maintained that there never were such 

 gardens as those of EHzabeth's reign, but by the middle of 

 the seventeenth century gardening was so much advanced 

 that the early years of Elizabeth were looked back upon 

 as a time of almost primitive horticulture. After a large 

 allowance is made for probable exaggeration, the fact remains 

 that the progress was sufficiently marked to be felt by the 

 writers of the time. Rea, writing in 1665, '' to the Reader " 

 of his Flora Ceres and Pomona, says his reason for publishing 

 his work was that after " seriously considering Mr. Parkinson's 

 garden, of pleasant flowers, and comparing my own collections 

 with what I there found (I) easily perceived his book to want 

 the addition of many noble things of newer choicing, and that a 

 multitude of those there set out, were by time grown stale, and 

 for unworthiness turned out of every good garden." Rea is 

 writing about the pleasure garden, but Hartlib, ten years earlier, 

 writes in the same strain of nursery gardening. 



Hartlib, a Pole by birth, settled in England early in Charles the 

 First's reign. During the Commonwealth he received a pension 

 from Cromwell of ;^ioo a year. His Legacy of Husbandry is a 

 review of agriculture, and his remarks are most practical. He 

 is strongly in favour of increasing the number of nursery gardens 

 and orchards, and argues chiefly on the ground that gardening 

 improved the land, and would pay well, if properly managed. 

 " Gardening though it be a wonderfull improver of lands as 

 it plainly appears by this, that they give extraordinary rates 

 for land . . . from 40 shillings per acre to 9 pound and 

 dig and howe, and dung their lands which costeth very much 

 . . . yet I know divers which by two or three acres of 

 land maintain themselves and family and imploy other 

 about their ground ; and therefore their ground must yield a 

 wonderful increase or else it could not pay charges ; — yet I 

 suppose there are many deficiencies in this calling, because 

 it is but of a few years standing in England, and therefore 

 not deeply rooted nor well understood. About fifty years ago, 

 about which time ingenuities first began to flourish in England, 

 this art of gardening began to creep into England into 

 Sandwich and Surrey, Fulham, and other places." He goes 



