28 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



for their own simple wants and in such little plots 

 of ground as they were able to obtain, they grew 

 the vegetables for the midday pottage the salads 

 which to them were a necessity of daily existence; 

 but they were not slow to find out as well that 

 for these comestibles a ready market was waiting 

 at their very doors, while they could teach besides 

 new ways of using them. As Parkinson, who evi- 

 dently had a pretty taste in cookery as well as 

 in gardening, wrote about that time: "Spinach 

 is an herbe fit for sallets. . . . Many English that 

 have learned it of the Dutch people, doe stew the 

 herbe in a pot or pipkin without any moisture then 

 its owne, and after the moisture is a trifle pressed 

 from it they put butter and a little spice unto it 

 and make therewith a dish that many delight to 

 eate of." The celery of Sandwich long held the 

 reputation which it acquired in those days. In- 

 sular prejudice has always been strong, yet the 

 more enlightened amongst the neighbours of these 

 frugal industrious people, taking heart of grace, 

 found out that they too could better their con- 

 dition by like means, and began to cultivate vege- 

 tables on their own account. By and by, some of 

 the cloth-workers, finding that their horticultural 

 fame had reached even to London itself, forsook 

 their looms, and wandering farther afield, set up 

 vegetable gardens on a more extensive scale at 

 Battersea and Bermondsey and elsewhere, in what 

 were then the outlying fields of the city, and thus 

 laid the foundation of the vast market-garden 

 industry which exists round London in our own 

 day. The hop gardens of Kent are supposed 



