AND CELEBRATED GARDENS 



But then Addison, as he himself says, was one who was looked 

 upon " as a humourist in gardening ... if a field flower pleased 

 him he gave it a place in his garden ... he always thought a 

 kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery 

 and artificial greenhouse : " he owns himself to be in another 

 respect " very whimsical," for his garden invites into it all the 

 birds of the country ; he offers springs and shade, solitude and 

 shelter, and suffers no one to destroy their nests in the spring, or 

 drive them from their usual haunts in fruit time. >l I value my 

 garden," he says, " more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, 

 and very frankly give them fruit for their songs." Furthermore, 

 he tells us, thus unconsciously describing for us the fashionable 

 gardens of the period, that he" thinks there are as many kinds of 

 gardening as of poetry. Your makers of parterres and flower- 

 gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art : contrivers 

 of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romance- 

 writers ; Wise and London are our heroic poets." 



Wise and London, mentioned more than once in future chapters, 

 were gardeners to William III. and Queen Anne. They had a 

 nursery between Brompton and Kensington. Evelyn mentions 

 visiting it in 1701, when he himself was in his eightieth year ; 

 and it was London, the King's gardener, who, as the reader will 

 remember, was called in by Admiral Benbow to assist Sir Chris- 

 topher Wren in estimating the damage done by the Czar Peter 

 to Evelyn's gardens at Sayes Court. 



In their day Wise and London were^distinguished horticul- 

 turists, but they carried on the tradition of a bad school. Dutch 

 gardeners endeavoured to make Nature statuesque. Shears were 

 ruthlessly used, and shrubs and trees the holly, the yew, and the 

 box as The Spectator had stated, were clipped and teased 

 into all manner of unnatural shapes, with the result that the 

 natural growth of the plant and tree was destroyed in this ex- 

 travagant abuse of topiary work. 



The reaction was bound to come ; and it came with the advent 

 of Bridgman, Launcelot, known as " Capability " Brown, Kent, 

 and other great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century. 

 Horace Walpole's " Essay on Modern Gardening " issued from 

 the Strawberry Hill Press in 1785. His letters to Sir Horace 

 Mann are full of allusion to his own attempt to turn a few acres of 



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