INTRODUCTORY 7 



to become rapidly popular with every class in the community. 

 In Piers Plowman, written in the fourteenth century, there is 

 a long list of fruits and vegetables grown in the small gardens 

 of the poor. In pleasure grounds belonging to the rich, 

 arbours, fountains and trim evergreen hedges made their first 

 appearance about this time. These accessories were doubtless 

 brought in from Italy, where they had been in favour for 

 centuries. The list of flowers cultivated begins now to in- 

 crease speedily. Madonna lilies were held in high honour, 

 and periwinkles, marigolds, roses and violets were favourites, 

 the rose most highly thought of being a fragrant double red. 

 The popularity of the rose is shown also by the fact that the 

 Houses of York and Lancaster adopted a white and a red one 

 as their respective badges ; and ever since, the rose has been, 

 before all, the flower-emblem of England. 



The first English book, entirely devoted to the subject, 

 is a poem called The Feate of Gardening, written about the 

 middle of the fifteenth century. The author, one Jon 

 Gardener, gives quite a long list of suitable plants. Among 

 flowers are : Rose, violet, hollyhock, cowslip, foxglove and 

 lavender. He also enumerates several garden-trees, bush and 

 ground fruits and herbs. During this century many new 

 flowers were introduced ; and topiary, an art which had long 

 been practised in Italy, was brought into England. The 

 first beginnings of landscape gardening seem to have been 

 attempted late in this and early in the next century. Artificial 

 hills and valleys covered with turf and planted with shrubs 

 and trees, and a little later, so-called " knotted beds," which 

 followed a more or less elaborate geometrical pattern, came 

 into fashion. Gardens of the Tudor period were often divided 

 into separate pleasances and alleys by stone and brick-built 

 walls or clipped hedges. The south garden at Hampton 

 Court is one of the very best examples now to be seen ; and 

 a delightful literary picture. Bacon's famous essay Of Gardens, 

 fortunately exists for every one to read. And Spenser, the 

 great poet of this " golden age," not only gives some gem- 

 like descriptions of gardens as a whole in the Faerie Queene, but 



