EARLY GARDEN LITERATURE 63 



a few pages devoted to grafting and planting of trees which 

 contain almost the same matter as those already cited, with a 

 few additions. The author gives all the usual recipes for 

 making fruit grow viithout stones, and so on, but he tells also 

 how to graft a vine and a red rose on a cherry, and how to make 

 the fruit turn blue by boring " an hole in the tre ni5e the rote " 

 and putting in " good asure of Almayne "; also, he says rose 

 hips, or " pepynes," as he calls them, should be sown in 

 February or March, " and dew heme welle with water " " iff 

 thou wolt have many rosys in thy herbere/'^ 



The earliest known really original work on gardening, 

 written in English, is a treatise in verse by " Mayster Ion 

 Gardener," of which a unique manuscript exists in the Library 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge. ^ It is contained in a small 

 volume of miscellaneous manuscript matter, which was given 

 to the College by Roger Gale in 1738 . This copy was apparently 

 written about 1440, but the poem is probably of earlier date. 

 From the evidence of the language, it appears that the author 

 was Kentish, and from the mistakes of the copyist, it would 

 seem that he was unfamiliar with some of the words which 

 were becoming obsolete at the time he wrote. The existing 

 title, " The Feate of Gardening," is evidently added by a later 

 hand. Nothing definite is known of the author of this poem. 

 He may have been a professional gardener, or he may merely 

 have assumed the name, as symbolic of the craft, just as Lang- 

 land wrote under the name of Piers Plowman. John certainly 

 was a very common Christian name among the gardeners 

 of the period. This treatise is a great step in advance of 

 earher writers. It is so thoroughly practical that the direc- 

 tions it contains might be followed with successful results at 

 the present day. It is unencumbered by superstitions, then 

 so prevalent, and quite free from fanciful recipes. The poem 

 contains 196 lines, consisting of a prologue and eight divisions, 

 under the following headings : " Off settyng' and Reryng' of 

 Treys " — " Of graffyng' of Treys " — " Of cuttyng' and settyng' 



^ Porkington MS., the property of W. Ormsby Gore, published by 

 the Warton Club in 1855, under the title of Early English Miscellanies, 

 ed. by G. O. Halliwell, F.R.S., etc. 



^ Printed, from my transcription, in the Archceologia, vol. liv., with a 

 glossary by myself. 



