EARLY GARDEN LITERATURE 
63 
a few pages devoted to grafting and planting of trees which 
contain almost the same matter as those already cited, with a 
few additions. The author gives all the usual recipes for 
making fruit grow without stones, and so on, but he tells also 
how to graft a vine and a red rose on a cherry, and how to make 
the fruit turn blue by boring “ an hole in the tre n^e the rote ” 
and putting in “ good asure of Almayne also, he says rose 
hips, or “ pepynes,” as he calls them, should be sown in 
February or March, “ and dew heme welle with water ” “ iff 
thou wolt have many rosys in thy herbere." 1 
The earliest known really original work on gardening, 
written in English, is a treatise in verse by “ Mayster Ion 
Gardener/' of which a unique manuscript exists in the Library 
of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 It is contained in a small 
volume of miscellaneous manuscript matter, which was given 
to the College by Roger Gale in 1738. This copy was apparently 
written about 1440, but the poem is probably of earlier date. 
From the evidence of the language, it appears that the author 
was Kentish, and from the mistakes of the copyist, it would 
seem that he was unfamiliar with some of the words which 
were becoming obsolete at the time he wrote. The existing 
title, “ The Feate of Gardening," is evidently added by a later 
hand. Nothing definite is known of the author of this poem. 
He may have been a professional gardener, or he may merely 
have assumed the name, as symbolic of the craft, just as Lang- 
land wrote under the name of Piers Plowman. John certainly 
was a very common Christian name among the gardeners 
of the period. This treatise is a great step in advance of 
earlier writers. It is so thoroughly practical that the direc¬ 
tions it contains might be followed with successful results at 
the present day. It is unencumbered by superstitions, then 
so prevalent, and quite free from fanciful recipes. The poem 
contains 196 lines, consisting of a prologue and eight divisions, 
under the following headings : “ Off settyng' and Reryng' of 
Treys ”—" Of graffyng' of Treys ”—“ Of cuttyng' and settyng* 
1 Porkington MS., the property of W. Ormsby Gore, published by 
the Warton Club in 1855, under the title of Early English Miscellanies, 
ed. by G. O. Halliwell, F.R.S., etc. 
2 Printed, from my transcription, in the Archceologia, vol. liv., with a 
glossary by myself. 
