86 KEW GARDENS 



work, about twelve feet in height, by which you may go 

 in shade into the garden. As for the making of knots, 

 or figures, with divers-coloured earths, that they may lie 

 under the windows of the house on that side on which the 

 garden stands, they be but toys : you may see as good 

 sights many times in tarts. The garden is best to be 

 square, encompassed on all the whole four sides with a 

 stately arched hedge ; the arches to be upon pillars of 

 carpenters 1 work, of some ten feet high, and six feet 

 broad ; and the spaces between of the same dimensions 

 with the breadth of the arch. Over the arches let there 

 be an entire hedge of some four feet high, framed also 

 upon carpenters' work ; and upon the upper hedge, over 

 every arch, a little turret, with a belly enough to 

 receive a cage of birds : and over every space between 

 the arches some other little figure, with broad plates of 

 round-coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon : but 

 this hedge I intend to be raised upon a bank, not steep, 

 but gently slope, of some six feet, set all with flowers. 

 Also, I understand that this square of the garden should 

 not be the whole breadth of the ground, but to leave on 

 either side ground enough for diversity of side alleys, 

 unto which the two covert alleys of the green may deliver 

 you ; but there must be no alleys with hedges at either 

 end of this great enclosure not at the hither end, for 

 letting your prospect upon this fair hedge from the 

 green nor at the further end, for letting 1 your prospect 

 from the hedge through the arches upon the heath. 



In the next century Capel's seat at Kew 

 had a garden which, more than once, won high 

 praise from that connoisseur, Evelyn. "The 



1 Letting in Elizabethan English, of course, bore the opposite 

 meaning to ours, as in " let and hinder." 



