INTRODUCTION. 



V. 



CLIPPED YEWS AT ELV ASTON. 



borders ; the greenhouse and the hothouse ; the window garden also — these, not less than the 

 kitchen garden, which is as interesting as the others, are all treated in these pages. The 

 ilower gardener will find that great attention has been paid both to annuals and biennials, to hardy 

 garden flowers, Roses, ornamental flowering shrubs, Orchids, and everything that he admires. 



The varieties of gardening that have been alluded to suggest reflections. How has the 

 horizon of the gardener been enlarged ? The botanist and cultivator have ransacked for him 

 the whole world for its charms, developed new possibilities, improved whole classes of flowers, 

 given us new varieties and forms, and tilled our gardens with new splendours. What a romance 

 there is in the history of the Orchid ! How much do we owe to France for Roses, Pasonies, 

 and Gladioli, to Holland for Hyacinths and Tulips, to the East for many of the most gorgeous 

 denizens of our garden ? The Englishman of old always loved his garden, though it was a 

 different garden from ours. Chaucer singing of the coming in of summer was thinking of 

 blossom on the tangled hedges, of the kindling green of the oak and yew, pastures and woods 

 by the racing brooks, lawns fresh with early dew, grassy hills looking out to the blue line of 

 sea, and the crisp breeze whispering in the hollows. The garden he knew was won from the 

 wild, an enclosed place enframed with well-shorn hedges of yew, with banks well tufted in its 

 arbour, and quaint parterres filled with the simple flowers of the time. In illuminated 

 manuscripts such places are disclosed to us. Therefore the formal arrangement which we 

 discern so plainly in Tudor gardens was a natural development, and the still more rigid 

 character imported later on from the Netherlands, was grafted upon indigenous stock. The 

 Tudor Englishman dearly loved a pleached alley, or a sheltered spot shut in by great hedges of yew. 



To those days we trace a certain formality, in conformity with architectural character, that 

 still is noticeable in many gardens, and in particular the great thick' hedges of yew. Evelyn, 

 "without vainitie," claimed the credit of bringing the yew " into fashion, as well for a defence 

 as for a succedaneum to cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic spires, bowls, and what 



