GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
which I am writing a banked-up bowling-green was attached to 
almost every considerable residence, and answered the same 
purpose as the modern tennis-ground: or perhaps it would be 
more correct to say of the golf links; for though more limited 
in area, it provided suitable recreation ground for men of mature 
years ; and it is said that Drake was playing bowls when the Armada 
was sighted. At any rate, it was the favourite pastime of the 
sturdy squires and yeomen of England, just as the maypole dance 
was that of her youths and maidens. 
It was under the Tudors that English gardens first assumed 
national character. The Tudors were richer than the Plantagenets, 
and more secure in possession, and had also the advantage of the 
new learning of the Renaissance that, ere long reaching our shores 
and providing a stimulus to every form of intellectual activity, 
inspired fresh ideas and undertakings in horticulture, scarcely less 
than in literature and art. Henry VIII. had done much to 
encourage gardening and garden-planning, and justly celebrated 
appear to have been the royal gardens of Nonsuch, near Ewell, 
in Surrey ; but these, together with the palace, have since been 
entirely destroyed. Although greatly altered, some portions of 
those at Hampton Court yet testify to the care which Henry VIII. 
spent on their embellishment when the Palace and Grounds passed 
into his hands. Not always commendable, however, were his 
schemes, if it be true that ‘‘ Beasts and the columns they stood 
upon”? were a prominent feature of the Hampton Court Gardens 
during the period of his ownership. 
At the time of Elizabeth’s accession, English gardens had 
probably arrived at their highest beauty, and since as yet they 
were but little affected by French and Dutch notions of garden- 
planning, they had acquired that peculiar, indefinable charm that 
we have learnt to associate with the words, ‘an old English 
garden.” 
In Elizabeth’s reign a passion for travel and discovery awoke, 
with large results ; one of which was the advance of horticulture as 
a science. For a new impulse was given to its study when men of 
the type of Cavendish and Raleigh, animated by a keen spirit of 
adventure and a desire for wider horizons, set forth to navigate 
summer seas in the far Indies, and, ere long, to explore the newly- 
discovered continent of America. 
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