GARDENERS — PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 



43 



of himself he says : "Myself one of your servants (referring to 

 Lord Burleigh), and under your lordship, I have served now by 

 the space of twenty years. To the large and singular furniture 

 of this noble island I have added from foreign parts all the variety 

 of herbs and flowers that I might any way obtain. I have 

 laboured with the soil to make it fit for plants, and with the 

 plants to make them delight in the soil, that so they might live 

 and prosper under our climate as in their native and proper 

 country ; what my success hath been and what my furniture is 

 I leave to the report of them that have seen your lordship's 

 gardens, and the little plot of my special care and husbandry." 

 Again, speaking of his own garden in Holborn, which was then 

 a village outside the walls of London, Gerarde says : " I have 

 here set down not only the names of sundry plants, but also 

 their natures, their proportions, and properties, their affects and 

 effects, their increase and decrease, their flourishing and fading, 

 their distinct varieties and several qualities, as well as those 

 which our own country yieldeth, as of others which I have 

 fetched further." What better example can be recommended 

 or adopted, or one more likely to result in success, than that 

 practised by John Gerarde ? 



The names of London and Wise will ever be connected with 

 the gardening of the 17th century. 



Of the birth and education of George London little is known ; 

 but during the four years he was under Mr. Rose, gardener to 

 Charles II, he was obliging, energetic, and persevering, so much 

 so that Mr. Rose sent him to France to improve himself in the 

 various branches of horticulture. On his return he was appointed 

 gardener to Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, whose gardens con- 

 tained the finest collection of plants of any horticultural 

 establishment then in England. But it was in connection with 

 the Brompton Park Nursery and as superintendent of all the 

 Royal Gardens that his name became famous. He and Wise, a 

 fellow pupil whom he took into partnership after the death and 

 retirement of his former partners, seem to have had at that time 

 the charge of nearly all the gardens and parks of note in the 

 kingdom, in addition to the aforementioned nursery, which we 

 are told covered over one hundred acres, and that if the plants 

 had been sold at one penny each the stock would have realised 

 nearly forty thousand pounds. 



