KITCHEN GARDENING UNDER JAMES I. 
135 
Gerard gives five pictures of what he calls “ tame ” or 
“ manured ” vines. He advises “ shavings of horn disposed 
about the roots, to cause fertility.” Parkinson's list includes 
twenty-three names. He says that Tradescant grew twenty 
sorts, but “ he never knew how or by what name to call them.” 
“ The ordinary grape, both white and red, which excelleth 
crabs for verjuyce, and is not fit for wine with us,” was probably 
what was usually grown in vineyards, the choicer sorts being 
only found, as these old writers would say, in the gardens of the 
curious. He has on his list black and white “ Muscadine,” and 
the “ Frontignack ” ; the other names are such as the “ claret 
wine grape,” “ the Rhenish wine grape.” Platt gives several 
recipes for keeping grapes—in pots covered with sand, the 
bunch hung up with the end of the stalk stuck in an apple ; or 
he says they can be preserved on the vine by covering the 
bunches with oiled paper. He constantly refers to the vine¬ 
yard, and how to “ order ” and plant it. The way he classes 
the orchard and vineyard together shows the latter was by no 
means uncommon : “ Master Pointer keepeth conies in his 
orchard, onely to keepe downe the grasse low ; . . . also in vine¬ 
yards the use is to turne up the ground with a shallow plough, 
as often as any grasse offereth to spring, but I think the preven¬ 
tion of grass in orchard and vineyard is much better, if it were 
not too costly.” Platt maintains that there is no reason why 
English wine should not be as good as that on the Continent. 
He attributes the ill-success in England to the bad way the 
vines were pruned, and he accuses “ the extreme negligence and 
blockish ignorance of our people, who do most unjustly lay 
their wrongful accusations upon the soil, whereas the greatest, 
if not the whole fault, justly may be removed upon them¬ 
selves.” 
The vineyards attached to the royal gardens at Windsor 
and Westminster were still flourishing. In 1618 fish-ponds 
were made in the “ vine garden ” at Westminster, “ for the 
king's cormorants, ospreys and otters.” 1 At Oatlands, in 
Surrey, there also appears to have been a vineyard, as pay¬ 
ments occur in 1619 for “ planting of new and rare fruits, 
flowers, herbs, and trees,” in the King’s garden there, and “ for 
1 Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, James I., by Devon, 1836. 
