204 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



is a large fountaine or bason which is to resemble that in the 

 privy garden at Whitehall, which will front the house. The 

 high terrass walks look out on the road." 



At Sir John St. Barbe's house, near Rumsey, new gardens 

 were also being made — " not finish'd but will be very ffine, 

 w"" Large Gates open to the Grounds beyond, some of w^'* 

 are planted with trees." The wish to have " several! places 

 with grates to Look through " was the latest development 

 of the craving to look beyond the garden, which was already 

 apparent in earlier times. Such arrangements of spaces, with 

 gates or iron bars, in the walls, is constantly noticeable in 

 the views of gardens early in the eighteenth centur3^ This 

 desire to extend the view, led to the planning of the park 

 and avenues to correspond with the open spaces at the side 

 or end of the garden walks. These attempts to harmonize the 

 garden with its surroundings gradually developed, until the 

 walls were dispensed with, and the " landscape " style super- 

 seded the older forms. In studying the changes in design, 

 it seems to me that there was no sudden " leaping the garden 

 wall." We must look for the beginnings of the landscape 

 style in the gradual change or decadence of the old formal 

 school. The Dutch style, introduced by WiUiam III., was an 

 exaggeration of the old manner of clipping trees. Topiary 

 work in yew, box, and other " greens," was carried to such an 

 excess, the gardens were so overcrowded \\dth cut trees, as 

 to become the laughing-stock of the succeeding generation, 

 and so bring about their own destruction. 



The word " knot " does not often occur in books of this date, 

 and the word " parterre," which takes its place, requires some 

 explanation. Meager, in The English Gardener, 1688, gives 

 a list of herbs " fit to set knots with," of which " Dutch or 

 French Box, it is the handsomest, the most durable, and the 

 cheapest to keep." And in the same chapter he refers his 

 reader to the plates at the end of the book, where he has 

 " presented to view divers forms or plots for gardens." In 

 1697 he speaks of parterres, and his designs are very similar. 

 Sir Thomas Hanmer, in notes for his proposed work on garden- 

 ing, also uses the two words : " If the ground be spacious, 

 the next adjacent quarters or parterres, as the French call 

 them, are often of fine turf, but as low as any green to bowl 



