SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
167 
£150 in their report to the Lords of the Treasury.” The 
famous holly hedge has long since disappeared, but traces of 
the old walks are still observable in the public garden main¬ 
tained on the site by a descendent of the great diarist. 
Besides the interest he took in his own garden, Evelyn 
helped to lay out others. The family seat of the Evelyns, 
Wotton, in Surrey, he says, was one of “ the most magnificent 
that England afforded, and which, indeed, gave one of the 
finest examples to that elegancy since so much in vogue.” 
He, however, helped his brother to carry out various altera¬ 
tions in 1652. With much deference to so distinguished a 
gardener as Evelyn, at this distance of time one may be allowed 
to doubt if all his alterations were improvements. There 
was a “ mount,” or “ mountaine,” and a moat within ten yards 
of the house. This was taken away by “ digging down the 
mountaine and flinging it into a rapid streame . . . filling up 
the moat, and levelling that noble area where now the garden 
and fountain is.” In 1658 he went “ to Alburie (Albury, near 
Guildford) to see how that garden proceeded, which I found 
exactly don to the designe and plot I had made, with the 
crypt a thro’ the mountain in the park 30 perches in length, 
such a Pausilippe is no where in England besides. The Canall 
was now digging and the vineyard planted.” This curious 
cutting through the hill still exists, besides other traces of the 
old work, and a very fine yew hedge and long grassy terraces. 
Again, he shows himself to be the advocate of a holly hedge, 
in the following extract from his Diary: " 25 Sept. 1672 ,1 din’d 
at Lord John Berkeleys ... it was in his new house or rather 
palace. . . . For the rest, the fore court is noble, so are the 
stables, and above all the gardens, which are incomparable 
by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty piscina. 
The holly hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of.” 
Berkeley House, which was burnt to the ground, stood on the 
site of what is now Hay Hill, Berkeley Square, and Lansdowne 
House. 
Evelyn himself tried to procure new seeds and plants from 
abroad, and also to make those trees he advocated in his Silva 
more plentiful; for many of them, such as the Plane and Horse- 
chestnut, were still uncommon in this country, and others, the 
