GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
seventeenth century had seldom a soul above his physic, com- 
pounded of herbs to be ‘‘ found under every hedge” and “ grown 
in every garden.” The larger aims of forestry concerned him 
but little; and it would appear that during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries popular interest in plants and trees centred 
in the cultivation of those vegetables and fruits, to which I have 
made earlier reference. 
Fortunately for posterity, and for botany in its relation to 
medical science, this indifference was not universal. We have 
seen Sir William Temple—almost as good a horticulturist as he 
was a statesman—regardless of the superior claims of patriotism, 
devoting his great gifts and his valuable time, in his voluntary: 
retirement from political life, to the culture of oranges and melons ; 
and John Evelyn, the famous diarist, introducing “‘ trees of curi- 
osity ”’ to this country and not resting until he had induced the 
great landowners to plant new oaks and elms in the place of those 
ruthlessly sacrificed during the civil wars; and now we shall find 
that about four years after Evelyn had introduced the cedar to 
England, was founded the garden that is the subject of this 
chapter. 
As previously mentioned, the earliest botanic garden in England 
was that of John Gerarde in Holborn. The catalogue of plants he 
published in 1596 mentions numerous varieties of the same species, as 
having been grown there. The next, in point of time, was that of a 
man equally celebrated, and already referred to more than once— 
John Tradescent, gardener to Charles I. He established at Lambeth 
a garden for exotic plants, and, as we already know, he was a good 
botanist and collector, in other branches of natural history. In 
1749, Mr. Watson, afterwards Sir William Watson, spoken of in 
the chapters on Fulham Palace, visited the Tradescent garden 
and found the house empty and ruinous, and the garden totally 
neglected ; but though a wilderness, ‘‘ it still showed traces of 
its founder.” 
Both the Gerarde and Tradescent gardens were highly com- 
mendable private enterprises, but the opportunities of their owners 
were necessarily limited. 
A Botanic garden endowed by the Earl of Derby had been 
founded at Oxford in 1652, but the honour of establishing in Lon- 
don the first of its kind supported by a public body, belongs to. 
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