VI 



PREFACE 



my thanks are due. Particulars of my indebtedness to those who have sup- 

 plied material for illustration will be found in the Note of Acknowledgment. 



The first history of Garden Craft was written in 1770 when Hirschfeld 

 published his Theorie de VArt des Jardins ; this was followed in 1824 by an inter- 

 esting series of historical references iwl^oudionh Encyclopedia. An instructive 

 little work by George Riat, entitled VArt des Jardins, was published in Paris 

 a few years ago. With these few exceptions I know of no work tracing the 

 historical development of garden craft in Europe. Mr. Forbes Sieve- 

 king's work, The Praise of Gardens, contains a valuable and interesting 

 collection of citations on gardens, from authors of all ages, and in 

 glancing through this fascinating collection it is curious to note how very 

 modern some of the old writers seem to be. They did not distinguish 

 the subject as that of " Formal " gardens, because in the view of most 

 garden lovers, at any rate until the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 all gardens were necessarily formal and regarded as essentially artificial 

 productions and not merely a strip of nature, captured and railed off. 



Miss Amherst's History of Gardening in England, issued in 1896, and Mr. 

 Blomfield's small book on The Formal Garden in England, 1892, together with 

 my own folio work upon the English and Scotch gardens, have made it un- 

 necessary to deal with English gardens as fully as I otherwise should. 



This short account of the development of garden-craft in Europe does not 

 profess to be exhaustive. The field is a wide one, and in order to have achieved 

 such a purpose it would have been necessary to have extended the size of 

 the work to at least several volumes. I have not given more than a passing 

 glance at the gardens of Norway, Sweden and Russia ; the development of 

 garden design in these countries occurred in the decadent period of the 

 eighteenth century and such gardens as were carried out were usually poor 

 imitations of the school of Le Notre or of the all-pervading English landscape 

 style. The Bibliography at the end of the volume will assist those who desire 

 to make a special study of any branch of the subject. 



H. INIGO TRIGGS. 

 Little Boarhunt 



LiPHOOK, 



February, 1 91 3. 



