THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



was but the centre and starting-point of a great decorative scheme. 

 Le Notre undoubtedly induced English gardeners to enlarge their 

 ideas of garden-making, and taught them some things which they 

 did not know before ; though naturally they had not many oppor- 

 tunities such as were offered at Badminton of showing how ready 

 they were to accept his principles of design. 



As a matter of fact the great gardens in the French fashion were 

 not numerous, and the ordinary country gentleman continued during 

 the seventeenth century, and part of the eighteenth, to use most of 

 the earlier devices and most of the traditional formalities. He did 

 his laying-out, perhaps, on a somewhat more generous scale and 

 with a view to more sumptuous effects ; he adopted, not always 

 discreetly, some of the novelties of the French method ; but if 

 occasionally he inclined rather too readily towards fountains and 

 statues and pretentious avenues, he more often remained faithful to 

 the knots and wildernesses, the rectangular divisions, the evenly- 

 spaced paths, and the architectural embellishments which had 

 pleased his ancestors. The ideas imported from abroad had not 

 destroyed the influence of such writers as Gervase Markham, and 

 even in such a book as the " Systema Horticulturas, or Art of 

 Gardening," written by John Worlidge, and published in 1677, 

 when the Le Notre fashion was in the ascendant, the formal manner 

 sanctioned by long custom is advocated with scarcely any alteration. 

 In the reigns of William and Mary and Anne some modifications 

 were introduced into the art of gardening, but they changed details 

 rather than main principles. From Holland there came with 

 William and Mary that variation of the Renaissance manner which 

 is known as Dutch gardening, a very evident descent from the 

 expansiveness of Le Notre, and in many respects a parody of the 

 Italian work. The Dutch love of quaintness had brought about an 

 exaggeration of the ancient device of clipping trees into purely 

 artificial forms, and as a result of this exaggeration a practice which 

 had been sanctified by centuries of use in England and abroad was 

 reduced to an absurdity. The topiary work which was executed in 

 English gardens in the earlier years of the eighteenth century was 

 too often without dignity or taste — merely extravagant and ridiculous. 

 It showed the degeneration of the gardener's art, and marked a 

 definite decay in the feeling for restful simplicity which had 

 governed the laying-out of so many of the older places. 

 But this degenerate art did not lack appreciation : there was a wide 

 demand for fantastic additions to the garden, and this demand was 

 supplied by many firms, like that of London and Wise at Chelsea, 



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