GOLDEN AGE OF TOPIARY 19 
to bring the yew into fashion for hedges, declaring it 
to be ‘‘as well for a defence as for a succedaneum to 
cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic spires, 
bowls or what other shapes.” And further he adds, “I 
do again name the yew, for hedges, preferably for beauty 
and a stiff defence, to any plant I have ever seen.” 
Evelyn’s residence from 1652 to 1694 was Sayes Court, 
‘Deptford, a home made famous to students of history 
because of its occupation by Peter the Great, of Russia, 
in 1698, to whom it was sub-let by Admiral Benbow. 
Peter the Great did not take the same care of the garden 
as Evelyn had taken, and his destruction, in part at least, 
of a famous holly hedge, caused the owner to regard 
the Russian Czar as a ‘‘right nasty tenant.” An old 
writer informs us, with reference to Sayes Court, that 
Evelyn had ‘‘a pleasant villa at Deptford, a fine garden 
for walks and hedges, and a pretty little greenhouse 
with an indifferent stock in it. He has four large 
round philareas, smooth clipped, raised on a single 
stalk from the ground, a fashion now much used. 
Part of his garden is very woody and shady for 
walking ; but not being walled, he has little of the 
best fruits.” 
The beginning of the end was not now far to seek. 
One of our greatest modern landscape gardeners, Mr 
H. E. Milner, has written: ‘‘ Precise designs of clipped 
box and yew are not out of place, if the building has a 
character that is consonant with such an accompaniment.” 
Not satisfied with a few clipped trees in suitable posi- 
tions, or with a part of the garden devoted to examples of 
Topiary, owners and gardeners alike, in the times I have 
briefly reviewed, seemed to have laboured to fill their 
gardens with illustrations of geometric figures, in box or 
yew ; with the quaintest patterns and wierdest shapes, 
caricaturing birds and beasts, and imitating architecture 
and things of common use. Distorted vegetation met the 
