90 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. 



Part I. 



in common use. The variety of fruits described, or at least mentioned, appears very 

 great. Of apples there are 58 sorts; of pears, 64 ; plums, 61 ; peaches, 21 ; nectarines, 

 5 ; apricots, 6 ; cherries, no fewer than 36 ; grape-vines, 23 ; figs, 3 ; with quinces, 

 medlars, almonds, v/alnuts, filberds, and tlie common small fruits. 



404. Croimvell was a great promoter of agriculture and the useful branches of gar- 

 dening, and his soldiers introduced all the best improvements wherever they went. He 

 gave a pension of lOQl. a-year to Ilartlib, a Lithuanian, who had studied husbandry in 

 Flanders, and published A Letter to Dr. Beati, concerning the Defects and Bemedies 

 of English Husbandry, and the Legacy, both useful works. He was an autlior, says 

 Harte, who preferred the faulty sublime, to the faulty mediocrity. He recommended 

 the adoption in England of the two secrets of Flemish husbandry, that of letting farms 

 on improving leases, and cultivating green crops. 



405. Charles II. being restored to the throne, introduced French gardening, and his 

 gardener, Rose, Daines Barrington infonns us, " planted such famous dwarfs at Hamp- 

 ton Coiu t, Carl'ton, and Marlborough gardens, that London, who was Rose's apprentice, 

 in his Betired Gardener, published 1667, challenges all Europe to produce the like." 

 Waller, the poet, in allusion to the two last gardens, describes the mall of St. James's 

 park, as r 



All with a border of rich fruit-trees crown'd." 



When Quintinye came to England to visit Evelyn, Charles II. offered him a pension to 

 stay and superintend the royal gardens here; but this, says Switzer {Pref. to Ichnograj^hia 

 rnstica), he declined, and returned to serve his own master. Daines Barrington conjec- 

 tures that Charles 11. had the first hot and ice houses ever built in this country, as at the 

 installation dinner given at Windsor, on the 23d of April, 1667, there were cherries, 

 strawberries, and ice-creams. These fruits, however, had been long, as Switzer states, 

 raised by dung-heat by the London gardeners, and the use of ices must have long before 

 been introduced from the continent. 



406. Evch/n was a distinguished patron of horticulture. On returning from his 

 travels, in 1653 he published his French Gardener, and from that time to his death in 

 1706 continued one of the greatest promoters of our art. In 1664, he published his 

 Pomona, and Calcndarium Hortense ; the latter, the first work of the kind which had 

 appeared in this country. In 1658, his translation of Quintinye's work on orange-trees, 

 and his Complete Gardener appeared ; and his -^^ce/ar/cr, in 1669, was his last work on 

 this branch of gardening. Evelyn is universally allowed to have been one of the warmest 

 friends to improvements in gardening and planting that has ever appeared. He is 

 eulogised by AVotton, in his Beficctions on Ancient and Modern Learning, as having 

 done more than all former ages, and by Switzer, in his historical preface to Ichnographia 

 nislica, as being the first that taught gardening to speak proper English. In his Memoira 

 by Bray, are the following horticultural notices. 



1661. Lady Brook's at Hachney ; " vines planted in strawberry borders, staked at ten feet distance. I 

 saw the famous queen-pine brought from Barbadoes, and presented to his majcst}'." Evelyn had seen one 

 four years before, and he afterwards saw the first king-pine presented at the Eanquetting-house, and tasted 

 of it. At Kensington Palace is a picture, in which Charles II. is receiving a pine-apple from his gardener, 

 Rose, who is presenting it on his knees. 



1G66. At Sir IViUiajn Temple's at East Sheen, the most remarkable things " are his orangery and gar- 

 dens, where the wall fruit-trees are most exquisitely nailed and trained, far better than I have noted any 

 where else." Sir 'William has some judicious remarks on the soils ai^.d situations of gardens, in his Essay 

 ^vritten in 1658. He was long ambassador at the Hague, and had the honor, as lie informs us, and as 

 Switzer confirms, of introducing some of our best peaches, apricots, cherries, and grapes. 



1678. At Kew Garden, {Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 17.) " Sir Henry Capel has the choicest plantation of fruit in 

 England, as he is the most industrious and most understanding in it." Daines Barrington {Archcsologia, 

 viii. 122.) considers Lord Capel to have been the first person of consequence in England, who was at much 

 expense in his gardens, having brought over with him many new fruits from France. 



407. Duiing the eighteenth century, the progress of horticulture, as of every other de- 

 partment of gardening v^ as rapid. Tliis will appear from the great number of excellent 

 authors who appeared during this period, as Millar, Lawrence,"^ Bradley, Switzer, in the 

 first half ; and Hitt, Abercrombie, Marshal, M'Phail, and others in the latter part of the 

 period. Switzer was an artist-gardener and a seedsman, and laid out many excellent 

 kitchen and fruit gardens, and built some hot-walls and forcing-houses. 



408. Forcing-houses and jnne-stoves appear to have been introduced in the early part 

 of the eighteenth century : but forcing by hot beds and dung placed behind walls of 

 boards were, according to Switzer ( Fruit Gardener) and Lord Bacon, in use for an un- 

 known length of time. 



409. The ])ine-apple was first successfully cultivated by Sir Matthew Decker, at Rich- 

 mond, in 1719. Warner, of Rotherhithe, excelled in the culture of the vine, and raised 

 from seed the red, or V/arner's Hamburgh, a variety which still continues to be much 

 esteemed. 



410. In the last year of the seventeenth century, appeared a curious work, entitled, 

 Fruit-iralls improved by inclining them to the Horizon, by N. Facio de Doulier, F. R. S. 



