ENGLISH GARDENS OF i6th, 17TH AND i8th CENTURIES 217 



Holland and came over to England in the reign of James I. John Tradescant 

 was employed at Hatfield by the first Lord Salisbury and soon made the 

 gardens famous for the many new varieties of fruit trees and other plants he 

 introduced from abroad. We are told that he travelled much in Europe, 

 Barbary and Virginia. It is curious that so many of the most famous gardens 

 of this period were to be found in Lon- 

 don, though Parkinson complains bitterly 

 that " neither herb nor tree will prosper 

 since the use of sea-coal." The Trades- 

 cant garden in South Lambeth was the 

 resort of the learned, and was even hon- 

 oured by a visit from the King and 

 Queen. In its day it was said to be the 

 finest in England, but it had retained a 

 good deal of the old herbalist character. 

 All the English botanists looked up to 

 Mathias de Lobel as their master in the 

 art of horticulture. He was one of the 

 first to attempt the scientific classification 

 of plants, and the lobelia was so named 

 in his honour. For many years he had 

 charge of the gardens belonging to Lord 

 Zouche, in Hackney, and he was made 

 botanist to James I. 



During the reign of Charles I no 

 great progress was made in gardening, 



but during the Commonwealth much was done to improve horticulture. 

 The Puritan did not wish for anything so frivolous as a parterre, and 

 considered the garden from a purely practical point of view — what would 

 pay best to cultivate, and how the fertility of his garden could be increased. 

 Not many pleasure gardens were laid out in consequence, and during the 

 -Civil War nearly all the finest Tudor and Elizabethan examples were destroyed. 

 Nonsuch and Wimbledon were sold, and the fate of Hampton Court itself 

 hung in the balance, but it was eventually left untouched. 



A good type of the seventeenth-century garden, devoid of such exaggera- 

 tion as Pope afterwards effectually ridiculed, was that at Moor Park in 

 Hertfordshire, of which Sir William Temple has left so delightful a descrip- 



pAtcmu \TrvT^' licrfty, rchchnu ftbirenimi'iidj.n. 



concfcltarum. tnrlAin'tuxL ipfc plirrirmnn. atwirot 



JOHN TRADESCANT. 



