SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
157 
gardens as those of Elizabeth’s reign, but by the middle of 
the seventeenth century gardening was so much advanced 
that the early years of Elizabeth were looked back upon as 
a time of almost primitive horticulture. After a large allow¬ 
ance is made for probable exaggeration, the fact remains that 
the progress was sufficiently marked to be felt by the writers 
of the time. Rea, writing in 1665 “ to the Reader ” of his 
Flora Ceres and Pomona , says his reason for publishing his work 
was that, after “ seriously considering Mr. Parkinson’s garden 
of pleasant flowers, and comparing my own collections with 
what I there found, (I) easily perceived his book to want the 
addition of many noble things of newer choicing, and that a 
multitude of those there set out were by time grown stale, and 
for unworthiness turned out of every good garden.” Rea is 
writing about the pleasure garden, but a correspondent of 
Hartlib’s, most likely Dymock, ten years earlier, writes in the 
same strain of nursery gardening. 
Hartlib, a Pole by birth, settled in England earlyin Charles I.’s 
reign. He received a pension from Cromwell of £100 a year, 
and did much to help the progress of agriculture. His Legacy 
of Husbandry is a collection of letters on Agriculture addressed 
to him probably by Cressy Dymock, Robert Child, Gabriel 
Plats, and others. They are in favour of increasing the number 
of nursery gardens and orchards, and argue chiefly on the ground 
that gardening would pay well if properly managed. “ Gar¬ 
dening though it be a wonderfull improver of lands as it plainly 
appears by this, that they give extraordinary rates for land 
. . . from 40 shillings per acre to 9 pound and dig and howe, 
and dung their lands which costeth very much . . . yet I know 
divers which by two or three acres of land maintain themselves 
and family and imploy other about their ground ; and therefore 
their ground must yield a wonderful increase or else it could not 
pay charges ;—yet I suppose there are many deficiencies in 
this calling, because it is but of a few years standing in England, 
and therefore not deeply rooted nor well understood. About 
fifty years ago, about which time ingenuities first began to 
flourish in England, this art of gardening began to creep into 
England into Sandwich and Surrey, Fulham, and other places.” 
He goes on to say that old men in Surrey remembered “ the 
