176 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
of Charade.” 1 The oranges were planted in cases, and were 
lifted out to adorn the garden during the summer months, 
but were “ committed betimes into the conservatory.” No 
garden was complete without its “ collection of choice greens.” 
Already in the time of Charles I. there existed several orangeries. 
At Wimbledon, the favourite resort of Henrietta Maria, was 
one of the finest examples. The orange garden was laid out 
“ in four knots,” bordered with box, and turfed squares with 
walks round them. In this the oranges stood out in tubs 
in the summer-time, and there was a garden house in the 
orangery, where the trees, forty-two in number, were stored for 
the winter. These trees were valued, when the Parliamentary 
survey was made prior to selling the place, at £420. The survey 
of these grounds forms a very complete picture of a garden of 
this date, the various terraces, trees, walks, summer-houses, and 
everything it contained, being carefully described and valued. 2 
After the Restoration, conservatories became more general, 
and are noticed by several of the writers of the time. Houses 
were built for the reception of “ tender greens ” at the Oxford 
Botanic Garden, and later on at Chelsea Physic Garden. The 
gardens of Essex House in the Strand possessed a fine collection 
“ of choicest greens,” under the care of John Rose, one of the 
most celebrated gardeners of that day. His treatment of 
plants in cases is thus quoted by Rea : " In spring and autumn 
you must take some of the earth out of the cases, and open the 
rest with a fork or other fit tool ... fill up again with rank earth 
two parts dung well rotted.” That orange-trees, however, 
were still considered a great novelty, the following extract 
from Peftys’ Diary will show : “ 25 June 1666.—Mrs. Pen 
carried us to two gardens at Hackney (which I every day grow 
more and more in love with), Mr. Drake’s one, where the garden 
is good, and house and prospect admirable, the other my Lord 
Brooke’s, where the gardens are much better, but the house 
not so good nor prospect good at all. But the gardens are 
excellent, and here I first saw oranges grow, some green, some 
1 Rea, Flora, Ceres , and Pomona, 1665 ; also Sharrock. 
2 Printed in Archceologia, vol. x., 1789. Reprinted in an Appendix to 
this volume from original MS. in the Record Office, Parliamentary 
Survey, No. 72. 
