DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING 239 



supply of vegetables in England ; but when anything special, 

 anything early, or out of season, was wanted on great festive 

 occasions, it was procured from abroad, chiefly from Holland. 

 This induced enterprising gardeners, early in the eighteenth 

 century, to make attempts at forcing greens and salads, aspara- 

 gus and cucumbers. The first to raise the latter in the autumn 

 for fruiting in winter was Fowler, gardener to Sir N. Gould, 

 at Stoke Newington. He presented George I. with two fine 

 cucumbers on New Year's Day, 1721. Samuel Collins, in 

 1717, wrote a Treatise on the culture of melons and cucumbers, 

 suggesting various glasses and frames for their protection. 

 The following is quoted from Bradley, and gives the names of 

 some of the pioneers in early forcing : " The first which are 

 Kitchen Gardens and exceed all the other gardens in Europe 

 for wholesome Produce and variety of Herbs are those at the 

 Neat-Houses near Tuttle-fields, Westminster, which abound in 

 Salads, early Cucumbers, Colliflowers, Melons, Winter Aspara- 

 gus, and almost every Herb fitting the Table ; and I think 

 there is no where so good a school for a Kitchen gardener as 

 this Place ; tho' Battersea affords the largest natural Asparagus 

 and the earliest Cabbages. Again, the Gardens about Ham- 

 mersmith are as famous for Strawberries, Rasberries, Currants, 

 Gooseberries, and such like ; and if early Fruit is our Desire 

 Mr. Millet's, at North End, near the same Place, affords us 

 Cherries, Apricocks, and Curiosities of those kinds, some 

 months before the Natural Season." Another good nursery- 

 man near London was Nicholas Parker at Chiswick. He is 

 highly recommended by Lawrence as known to all men for his 

 " honesty, skill, and integrity," which seems more than could 

 be said of all in the same trade. They were inclined to cheat 

 and send out inferior varieties of fruit, in the place of those 

 ordered by the purchaser, " a dry insipid Nectorine " instead of 

 " an old Newington Peach, or instead of a rich French Pear 

 a gritty choak-pear or Warden." 1 



Kalm, the great Swedish horticulturalist, after whom the 

 genus Kalmia was named, who passed through England on his 

 way to America, in 1748, was struck by the market-gardens and 



1 The Clergyman's Recreation. John Lawrence, Rector of Yelver- 

 toft, Northamptonshire, 1714. 



