70 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ January 54, ’889. 
dark purplish crimson, the other nearly pure white, and they may be 
taken as representing the extremes of colour variation.—L. C. 
NOTES ON EARLY ENGLISH HORTICULTURE. 
(Continued from page 469, last vol.~) 
The Artichoke (Cynara, that is, not that oddly called the 
Jerusalem Artichoke) was brought into England early in the 
sixteenth century, coming by way of France from the countries of 
the Mediterranean, but it was for some time a scarce plant in our 
island. There is an entry in the Privy Purse accounts of Henry VIII. 
of payments made for “ Archecokks,” brought to York place by the 
Lord Treasurer’s servant. Gerard evidently knew both the French 
and Globe varieties, and in the reign of Elizabeth some Italians 
were so much taken with the size and flavour of the English Arti¬ 
chokes, that they carried plants to their native land, but to their 
disappointment they dwindled away there. It was Gerard’s idea 
that the Latin name came from cinis, and suggested the fact that 
the plant should be manured with ashes ; doubtless it prefers a 
soil rich in saline ingredients. Our forefathers probably ate Arti¬ 
chokes raw often, as the French still do, while they are young. One 
of the vegetables which the monks seem to have had an acquaintance 
with, though they kept their knowledge to themselves, was Spinach, 
to which they gave the name of Spinargum, but the break-up of 
the convents led Turner and others to see, and then grow this 
admired esculent. So, too, was it with the Shalot, a favourite upon 
fast days, brought over, it is supposed, by some palmer in the period 
of the Crusades. But the common folk of England and Wales had 
for centuries used the Leek to flavour broths ; indeed its history in 
Wales goes too far back to be dated. Garlic began to be cultivated 
about 1548. Tusser connects it with a dish of autumn Beans, and 
the English soon became fond of this strong-flavoured vegetable, to 
which they ascribed special virtues. Turnips were evidently not 
admired at first, being only grown in gardens to a small extent, 
perhaps because the mode of cooking them, by baking the roots in 
the ashes, did not tend to make the roots liked. But the tops were 
also eaten now and then as a spring salad. Though Cucumbers are 
named during the reign of Edward III., they appear to have dropped 
out of knowledge afterwards, till the culture of the plant was 
revived under Henry or Elizabeth. The kind then grown was, 
by the description, a green smooth variety, and hardy. Probably 
the old botanists were right in their notion that the Gooseberry 
was a native plant, bu ffor a long period nobody thought of culti¬ 
vating it in gardens. Gerard states that it was called the Feaberry 
by the northerners, and from the north plants were brought to the 
south of England. 
William Bullen, or Bulleyne, divine and physician, was not 
himself a gardener, but he made a study of all the plants he could 
get hold of, both English and foreign, and in the course of his 
travels about Europe he was impressed with the fact that there was 
no reason why many hundreds of the continental species he saw 
might not also grow in his own land. At one time rector of 
Bloxall, then a physician in Durham, he came to London while 
Mary reigned, and got himself arrested on a charge of attempted 
murder. While in prison he wrote some books, especially his 
“ Bulwark of Defence,” in which Hilarius the gardener, and Health 
the physician, hold converse. This was published during 1579, 
and made its mark within the already widening circle of naturalists 
and gardeners. He must surely have known Tusser and Hill, his 
contemporaries, the former so famous for his “ One Hundred 
Points of Good Husbandry,” which came out in 1557, but he 
appears to have been, to his misfortune, better skilled in theory 
than in practice. His troubles began early, since he laments in one 
poem the chastisement he had at Eton, thrashed even, on a certain 
day, to the extent of fifty-three stripes “ for no fault at all.” Ten 
years or more of London life did not tend to qualify him for the 
life of a farmer, and he acknowledges that his gains were few, and 
his pains great on his land in Suffolk. His directions to farmers 
and gardeners are mixed up with astrological fancies, but they 
afforded some practical hints. He was a bee-keeper, too, and 
studied these insects, pointing out the importance of feeding them 
in winter. 
Some book catalogues index separately Thomas Hill and 
“Didymus Mountain” without indicating that the latter was a 
nom de flume of the former, a citizen of London, born in 1543, 
and, so far as we can ascertain, the first Englishman who wrote 
upon the subject of ornamental gardening. The growing popu¬ 
larity of horticulture is proved by the demand that arose from his 
quarto volume on the “ Art of Gardening,” published in 1568, four 
more editions of which appeared in the author’s lifetime. 'Twas 
an odd combination this book—of notes from classical authors and 
observations of his own. It may surprise some to fiud that the 
Lily of the Yalley, a favourite flower now, was freely grown in the 
gardens of that day, often in company with Lavender, which had a 
high value set upon it, hence the name, says Hill ; people used the 
plant when they laved or washed, hot water being poured upon it 
to extract the perfume. Radishes, remarks he, were very well 
known and liked by both rich and poor, but Beet was chiefly eaten 
by the poor, which is not the fact now. Unless Endive was 
blanched few cared for it, therefore Hill directs that this vegetable 
be tied up with brown thread then covered from the light. 
Hiding himself in anonymous guise, for no obvious reason, 
Hill published his “Gardener’s Labyrinth” in 1573, its title 
suggested doubtless by the labyrinths or mazes then becoming 
common, but he covers a wide range of subjects connected with 
gardening, the real or supposed virtues of different plants, and 
the best way of distilling waters. He gives figures of mazes and 
also of arbours or “ herbers,” as he calls them. Probably the oldest 
existing specimen of the old fashioned maze is that of the Hampton 
Court garden, which dates from this period. Here a word of 
explanation is required with regard to the “ wilderness ” so-called, 
a frequent appendage to gardens formerly, and which people have 
supposed to be a piece of ground more or less waste. There is, 
however, positive proof that the wilderness was a kind of shrubbery, 
regularly planted, but not mazy ; why our ancestors adopted the 
name we cannot tell. Good Didymus also appends figures of 
“ knots these were, as we see, the precursors of our modern 
flower beds, the arrangement geometric, and it seems often to have 
been the plan to cut up a garden into numerous squares, each having a 
bush or shrub at the centre, and ranged round this smaller plants. 
Many of the old knots were raised in the centre with no particular 
advantage, we should think, especially when water was thrown on 
these with a wide-mouthed syringe, as Didymus represents. A 
little pile of tools does not differ much from those we employ, but 
the half oval blade of the spade does not look very effective, and 
the rake is short, having few teeth ; the pruning knife is of very 
formidable dimensions.—J. R. S. C. 
THE TULIP. 
I happened to be writing about the show Tulip a few years 
ago, and made this remark upon it, “ Stimulated by a small band 
of enthusiastic cultivators in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and 
also by the interest shown in the flower by the Manchester 
Botanical and Horticultural Society, the interest in it is spreading 
not only in the midland counties, but at a great distance from the 
point where the greatest enthusiasm prevails.” It is pleasing 
to record the fact that there are many growers now in the south 
who have taken up its culture—men who do not care to make an 
exhibition subject of it, but amateurs who like to have these 
historical flowers in their garden. The old writers tell us that the 
Tulip began to be an object of commerce early in the seventeenth 
century ; and it was not long before it became a great favourite, as 
very extravagant sums were paid for them ; but as we are dealing 
with an historical subject, and withal a not unimportant one, it may 
be as well to start at the beginning. 
The earliest mention of the Tulip I know is by C. Gesner, who 
says he first saw it in flower in 1559 at Augsburg in the garden of 
the “ learned and ingenious councillor John Henry Herwart and, 
further, that the first that were planted in England were sent 
thither from Vienna about the end of the sixteenth century ; but 
we are further informed that they were sent to Vienna from Con¬ 
stantinople a little before “ by an excellent man, Carolus Clusius.” 
The equally excellent and good old gardener, John Parkinson, 
describes about 120 varieties divided into early, midseason, and 
late flowering. In his “ Garden of Pleasant Flowers ” he gives 
minute cultural directions, as well for seed-sowing, but quotes 
Clusius as a better authority than himself on the latter subject. 
As Parkinson wrote very early in the seventeenth century we can 
well believe that the Tulip was extensively grown in England as 
well as Holland at that time. Very high prices were given for 
them also, as we read that in the register of the City of Alkmaar, 
in the year 1637, they sold publicly, for the benefit of the Orphan 
Hospital, 120 Tulips, with their offsets, for 9000 florins, and that 
one of these flowers named the Viceroy was sold for 4203 florins. 
A bushel of Wheat at that time in Holland was equivalent to a 
florin. 
Very high prices were paid after this for real Tulip bulbs ; but 
these formed only a small portion of the trade done in Tulips. 
The whole thing became a kind of gambling, which reached to such 
a height that it had to be put a stop to by the Government. A 
variety named Admiral Leifken was very popular, and one bulb of 
it cost 4400 florins ; but the celebrated Semper Augustus created 
the greatest sensation. Of this variety it so happened that only 
two bulbs of it were to be had—one at Amsterdam, the other at 
Haarlem—and that for one of these 4600 florins, a new carriage 
