AND CELEBRATED GARDENS 
But then Addison, as he himself says, was one who was looked 
upon “as a humourist in gardening . . . if a field flower pleased 
him he gave it a place in his garden . . . he always thought a 
kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery 
and artificial greenhouse:” he owns himself to be in another 
respect ‘‘ very whimsical,” for his garden invites into it all the 
birds of the country; he offers springs and shade, solitude and 
shelter, and suffers no one to destroy their nests in the spring, or 
drive them from their usual haunts in fruit time. ‘‘ I value my 
garden,” he says, ‘‘ more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, 
and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.” Furthermore, 
he tells us, thus unconsciously describing for us the fashionable 
gardens of the period, that he “‘ thinks there are as many kinds of 
gardening as of poetry. Your makers of parterres and flower- 
gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art: contrivers 
of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romance- 
writers ; Wise and London are our heroic poets.”’ 
Wise and London, mentioned more than once in future chapters, 
were gardeners to William III. and Queen Anne. They had a 
nursery between Brompton and Kensington. Evelyn mentions 
visiting it in 1701, when he himself was in his eightieth year ; 
and it was London, the King’s gardener, who, as the reader will 
remember, was called in by Admiral Benbow to assist Sir Chris- 
topher Wren in estimating the damage done by the Czar Peter 
to Evelyn’s gardens at-Sayes Court. 
In their day Wise and London were distinguished horticul- 
turists, but they carried on the tradition of a bad school. Dutch 
gardeners endeavoured to make Nature statuesque. Shears were 
ruthlessly used, and shrubs and trees—the holly, the yew, and the 
box—as The Spectator had stated, were clipped and teased 
into all manner of unnatural shapes, with the result that the 
natural growth of the plant and tree was destroyed in this ex- 
travagant abuse of topiary work. 
The reaction was bound to come; and it came with the advent 
of Bridgman, Launcelot, known as “ Capability’ Brown, Kent, 
and other great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century. 
Horace Walpole’s “ Essay on Modern Gardening” issued from 
the Strawberry Hill Press in 1785. His letters to Sir Horace 
Mann are full of allusion to his own attempt to turn a few acres of 
27 
