2i6 GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



was a practical agriculturist, an intelligent reformer in matters connected 

 with horse-breeding and racing, and almost the first importer of Arab horses, 

 of which he sold one to James I for ;f500. He was, moreover, a poet and 

 a playwright. 



Among the best sources of information about English Renaissance 

 gardens is a work called The Country Housewife's Garden, published by 

 Gervase Markham in 1617, and also William Lawson's A new orchard and 

 garden (1618). These two authors were friends and sometimes collabor- 

 ators, and both wrote from their own experience. Lawson in his preface 

 tells us that his work was the result of forty-eight years' experience. Gervase 

 Markham affects a supreme contempt for those garden authors who con- 

 tented themselves with merely translating the works of foreigners. " Con- 

 trary to all other authors," he writes, " I am neither beholding to Pliny, 

 Virgil, Columella, etc., according to the plaine true Englishe fashion, thus 

 I pursue my purpose." But nevertheless in the title page of his Country 

 House he tells us that it is a " translation from Estienne and Liebault by 

 Rd. Surflet Practitioner in Physicke " but " reviewed and augmented 

 with additions out of Serres, Vinet, and others Spanish and Italian, by 

 G. M." The work is composed of five books ; book II deals with gardens. 

 A situation is recommended where the owner can enjoy the garden from 

 his windows : " Some plaine plot of ground, which is, as it were, a little 

 hanging and thereby at the foot receiving the stream of some pleasant water." 

 It must be hedged, or better, walled " if the revenues of the house will 

 beare it." 



William Lawson treats more of orchards and fruit trees ; he writes 

 in a delightful style of country life and deals with one of the most charming 

 sides of the English Renaissance, its delight in flowers and birds. " One 

 chiefe grace," he writes, " that adorns an Orcharde I cannot let slippe. 

 A brood of nightingales, who with their several notes and tunes with a strong 

 delightsome voyce, out of a weake body, will beare you company night 

 and day." 



It was not until the early years of the seventeenth century that the Erigr.. 

 lish gardeners seriously devoted themselves to the collection of foreign plants. 

 Amongst others the three generations of the Tradescant family stand pre- 

 eminent for their zeal and knowledge, and under their influence gardening rose 

 to be a more exact art than it had hitherto been. The family originated in 



