SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 157 



gardens as those of Elizabeth'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 allow- 

 ance is made for probkble 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 un worthiness turned out of every good garden." Rea is 

 writing about the pleasure garden, but a correspondent of 

 Hartlib's, most likely Dymock, ten years earlier, writes in the 

 same strain of nursery gardening. 



Hartlib, a Pole by birth, settled in England earlyin Charles I.'s 

 reign. He received a pension from Cromwell of ;£ioo a year, 

 and did much to help the progress of agriculture. His Legacy 

 of Husbandry is a collection of letters on Agriculture addressed 

 to him probably by Cressy Dymock, Robert Child, Gabriel 

 Plats, and others. They are in favour of increasing the number 

 of nursery gardens and orchards, and argue chiefly on the ground 

 that gardening would pay well if properly managed. " Gar- 

 dening though it be a wonderfuU 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 on to say that old men in Surrey remembered " the 



