FLORICULTURE 
14 feet high; on the west was a wilder- 
ness containing ten acres. In the gar- 
dens were pyramids, fountains and ba- 
sins of marble, one of which was set 
round with six lilac trees. Besides the 
lilacs there were 144 fruit trees, two 
yews and one juniper; in the kitchen 
garden were 72 fruit trees and one lime 
tree; lastly, before the palace was a neat 
bowling green, surrounded with a balus- 
trade of strong stone. This was in the 
year 1650. 
Lord Francis Bacon attempted to re- 
form the national taste in gardening dur- 
ing his time, but apparently with little 
immediate success. He wished still to 
retain the shorn trees and hedges, but 
proposed winter or evergreen gardens 
and rude or neglected spots as specimens 
of wild nature. “As for the making of 
knots and figures,” said he, “with divers 
colored earth, they be but toys. I do not 
like images cut out in juniper and other 
garden stuff, they are for children.” Sir 
Henry Wotton said the garden at Lord 
Bacon’s was one of the best he had ever 
seen, either at home or abroad. It is al- 
lowed on all sides that Joseph Addison 
and Alexander Pope prepared for the 
new art of gardening the firm basis 
of philosophical principles. Addison had 
a small retirement at Bilton, laid out 
in what may be called a rural style. 
Pope attacked the verdant sculpture and 
formal groves of the ancients with the 
keenest shafts of ridicule, and in his 
“Hypistle to Lord Burlington,” laid down 
the most just principles of art, the study 
of nature, of the genius of the place, 
and never to lose sight of good sense. 
But it was reserved for William Kent 
to carry their ideas more extensively into 
execution. It was reserved for him to 
realize the beautiful descriptions of the 
poets for which he was peculiarly adapt- 
ed by being a painter as the true test 
of perfection in landscape gardening is 
that a painter would choose it as a com- 
position. Kent was born 1675 and died 
1748. Kent was succeeded by Launcelot 
Brown. Brown was bred a kitchen gar- 
dener, but was afterwards head garden- 
er at Stowe. He was extensively em- 
ployed by the nobility. His new planta- 
979 
tions were generally void of genius, 
taste and propriety. His creations were 
all surrounded by a narrow belt, and 
the space within was distinguished by 
numbers of round or oval clumps, and a 
reach of one or two tame rivers on dif- 
ferent levels. This description in short 
will apply to almost every place in Eng- 
land laid out from the time about 1740, 
when the passion commenced for new 
modeling country seats, to about 1785 or 
1790, when it, in a great measure, ceased. 
The leading outline of this plan of im- 
provement was easily recollected and 
easily applied. The great demand pro- 
duced abundance of artists and the gen- 
eral appearance of the country so rapidly 
changed under their operation that in the 
year 1772 Sir William Chambers declared 
that if the mania were not checked in 
a few years longer there would not be 
found “three trees in a line in the entire 
country.” This system was, in fact, more 
formal than the ancient style, which it 
succeeded, because it had fewer parts. 
The ancient gardens had avenues, alleys, 
platoons, circular masses, rows double 
and single, all from one material wood, 
but the new style, as then degraded, had 
only three forms, the clump, the belt 
and single tree. 
The good sense of the country soon re- 
volted at such monstrous productions, 
and proprietors were ridiculed for ex- 
pending immense sums in destroying old 
gardens, avenues and woods, and plant- 
ing in their place young clumps for no 
other reason than that it was the fash- 
ion to do so. The writers who ventured 
to protest were principally: George Ma- 
son, in his “Design in Gardening,” 1765; 
William Sheustone in ‘“Unconnected 
Thoughts on Gardening,” 1764; Whately 
in “Observations on Modern Gardening,” 
1771; William Chambers in “Dissertation 
on Oriental Gardening,” 1772; William 
Mason, the poet, in “The English Gar- 
den,” 1772-1789; and especially the writ- 
ings of Richard Paine Knight, Sir Uoe- 
dale Price and Rev. William Gilpin, 1780- 
1800. 
The change of taste in gardening seems 
to have been materially aided by accounts 
of Chinese gardens, about the end of the 
