SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
171 
andsuch like. Thestreight beds are fit for the best Tulips, where 
account may be kept of them. Ranunculus and Anemonies 
also require particular beds—the rest may be set all over with 
the more ordinary sorts of Tulips, Frittilarias, bulbed Iris, and 
all other kinds of good roots. ... It will be requisite to have 
in the middle of one side of the flower garden a handsom 
octangular somer-house roofed everyway and finely painted 
with Landskips and other conceits furnished with seats about 
and a table in the middle which serveth not only for delight and 
entertainment, but for many other necessary purposes as to 
put the roots of Tulips and other flowers in, as they are taken 
up upon papers, with the names upon them untill they be 
dried, that they may be wrapped up and put in boxes. You 
must yearly make your hot bed for raising of choice annuals, 
for the raising of new varieties of divers kinds. These gardens 
will not be maintained and kept well furnished without a 
Nurcery, as well of stocks for fruits as of flowers and seedlings 
where many pretty conclusions may be practised.” 
Rea's description shows what great attention was paid to the 
culture of bulbs, especially tulips, in the average small garden. 
“ Tulip fever ” was at its height, and although it never reached 
such a climax in England as it did in Holland, the flowers were 
justly popular. Fifty years after the first tulip was seen in 
Augsburg (1559) the flower was well known and largely culti¬ 
vated throughout Germany, Holland, and England. About 
seven distinct varieties were grown, and endless variations pro¬ 
pagated from them, and the rage for procuring fresh colours 
became a passion among gardeners. Rea's son-in-law, 
Samuel Gilbert, in his Florist's Vade-Mecum , 1 gives a plan of a 
garden for tulips. The beds are divided into squares, and 
numbered up to fifty, and each division was intended for a 
distinct variety of tulip. 
A present of tulips was much valued, or an exchange was 
effected among friends, and each new variety carefully trea¬ 
sured. The following notes occur in a pocket-book of Sir 
ThomasHanmer: “Tulips sent to Sir J. Trevor 1654 1 Peruchot 
1 Admiral Enchuysen 1 of my Angelicas 1 Comisetta 1 Omen 
1 of my best Dianas, all very good bearing rootes, sent by my 
1 Second edition, 1683. 
