70 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. 



Parx I. 



Jbtmpton-caurt was laid out about the middle of thU reign, by Cardinal Wolsey. The labyrinth, one 



of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an acre, and contains nearly half a mile 

 of winding walks. There is an adjacent stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the 

 adventuring stranger by his directions. Switzer condemns this labyrinth for having only four stops, and 

 gives a plan for one with twenty. Daines Barrington says {Archteolog.), that he got out by keeping close, 

 to the hedge. 



323. During Elizabeth's reign^ Hatfield, Lord Treasurer Burleigh's, Holland -house, 

 and some otlier old seats were laid out. Of Hatfield, Hentzner says, the " gardens are 

 surrounded by a piece of water, with boats rowing through alleys of well cut trees, and 

 labyrinths made with great labor ; there are jets-cVeau and a summer-house, with many 

 pleasant and fair fish-ponds. Statues w^ere very abundant. The Gardejiei''s Labyrinthy 

 published during this reign, contains plates of " knotts and mazes cunningly handled 

 for the beautifying of gardens." 



324. During the reign of James I. the gardens of Theobalds and Greenwich were 

 formed or improved. The garden at Theobalds, Mandelso, a traveller who visited 

 England about 1640, describes as " a large square, having all its walls covered with 

 fillery (trellis- work), and a beautiful Je^-rf'eau in the centre. The parterre hath many 

 pleasant walks, part of which are planted on the sides with espaliers, and others arched 

 over. Some of the trees are limes and elms, and at the end is a small mount, called 

 iha Mount of Venus, which is placed in the midst of a labyrinth, and is upon the whole 

 one of tlie most beautiful spots in the world." {Voyages de Mandelso, tom. i. p. 598.) 

 Lord Bacon attempted to reform the national taste during this reign, but apparently 

 with little immediate success. He wished still to retain shorn trees and hedges ; but 

 proposed winter, or evergreen gardens, and rude or neglected spots, as specimens of wild 

 nature. " As for tlie making of knots or figures," says he, " with divers colored earths 

 — they be but toys. I do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden-stuff — they 

 are for children." {Essay on Gardens.) Sir Henry Wotton says, "the garden at Lord 

 Verulam's was one of the best he had seen, either at home or abroad." Lawson's A^ew 

 Orchard was published in 1626; he gives directions also for parterres and labyrinths. 

 A curious idea is given of the taste of these times in what he says of the latter. " Mazes 

 well framed a man's height may, perhaps, make your friend wander in gathering berries, 

 till he cannot recover himself without your help." 



325. During the commonwealth a Janua Trilinguis was published at Oxford, in which 

 we are informed, that " gardening is practised for food's sake in a kitchen-garden and 

 orchard, or for pleasure's sake in a green grass-plot and an arbor." As to the formation 

 of the latter, the author adds, " the pleacher {topiarius) prepares a green plat of the more 

 choice flowers and rarer plants, and adorns the garden with pleach-work ; that is, with 

 pleasant walks and bowers, &c. to conclude with purling fountains, and water-works." 

 (chap. 32.) We learn also from this comprehensive author (Commenius) the ancient use 

 of parks. We are told, " the huntsman hunteth wild beasts, wliilst he either allureth 

 them into pitfalls, and killeth them, or forceth them into toils ; and what he gets alive 

 he puts into a park." (chap. 37.) 



326. During the reign of Charles II., landscape-gardening received a grand impulse. 

 This monarch, we are informed by Daines Barrington, sent for Perault and Le Notre ; 

 tlie former declined coming to England, but the latter planted Greenwich and St. 

 James's Parks. Charles planted the semicircle of Hampton Gourt ; the beginning, as 

 Switzer informs us, of a grand design never completed. Lord Capel and tlie Earl of 

 Essex are mentioned by Switzer as eminent encouragers of gardening during this reign. 

 The latter sent his gardener. Rose, to study the much celebrated beauties of Versailles ; 

 £Hid on his return he v/as appointed royal gardener. 



Chatsworth [fig. 28.}, the magnificent seat of the Duke of Devonshire, was laid out in this reign ; and 

 It IS conjectured, from a design from the same artist. {Beauties of England and Wales. Derbyshire.) Waller 

 the poet formed his residence at Beaconsfield about the same time. The grounds there being very irre- 

 gular, he has been at considerable labor in reducing the parts near the house and banquetting-room to 

 regular slopes and levels, harmonising with an oblong basin or canaL It is but justice to the memory of 

 this amateur, who was undoubtedly a man of taste in his day, that, in the more remote scenes, no appear- 

 ance of art is discernible, or seems ever to have been intended. Their dry, ragged-edged paths, conducted 

 through the natural woods, form a fine contrast to the artificMal scenes at Prior's Park. 



Garden-buUdings^ Daines Barrington conjectures, were first erected in England during this reign by 

 Inigo Jones, at Beckett near Farringdon. There a banquetting-room is placed on a point of land project- 

 mg into a lake, and is surrounded with a broad base, or platform, protected by a parapet-wall, and 

 shaded by the far-projecting eaves of the building- It consists of one apartment with a ceUar below : and 

 the covered platform, or base, is supposed to be for ths purpose of angling. 



327. Evelyn, the well-known author of Sylva and other gardening books, flourished 

 during this reign. In his memoirs {jmblished by Bray, 1818) are the following remarks 

 on the gardens of England, in respect to taste and style : — 



Wooton, in Surrey, 1652, the residence of his father he describes as, for woods and waters, among 

 the most natural and magnificent examples which England afforded "till this late and universal lux- 

 ury ot the whole nation since abounding in such expenses." 



" Gave my brother some directions about his garden, which he was desirous to put into some form, for 

 Which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and thickets, and a moat within ten 



