204 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
is a large fountaine or bason which is to resemble that in the 
privy garden at Whitehall, which will front the house. The 
high terrass walks look out on the road.” 
At Sir John St. Barbe’s house, near Rumsey, new gardens 
were also being made—“ not finish’d but will be very ffine, 
w th Large Gates open to the Grounds beyond, some of w ch 
are planted with trees.” The wish to have “ severall places 
with grates to Look through ” was the latest development 
of the craving to look beyond the garden, which was already 
apparent in earlier times. Such arrangements of spaces, with 
gates or iron bars, in the walls, is constantly noticeable in 
the views of gardens early in the eighteenth century. This 
desire to extend the view, led to the planning of the park 
and avenues to correspond with the open spaces at the side 
or end of the garden walks. These attempts to harmonize the 
garden with its surroundings gradually developed, until the 
walls were dispensed with, and the “ landscape ” style super¬ 
seded the older forms. In studying the changes in design, 
it seems to me that there was no sudden “ leaping the garden 
wall.” We must look for the beginnings of the landscape 
style in the gradual change or decadence of the old formal 
school. The Dutch style, introduced by William III., was an 
exaggeration of the old manner of clipping trees. Topiary 
work in yew, box, and other “ greens,” was carried to such an 
excess, the gardens were so overcrowded with cut trees, as 
to become the laughing-stock of the succeeding generation, 
and so bring about their own destruction. 
The word “ knot ” does not often occur in books of this date, 
and the word “ parterre,” which takes its place, requires some 
explanation. Meager, in The English Gardener , 1688, gives 
a list of herbs “ fit to set knots with,” of which “ Dutch or 
French Box, it is the handsomest, the most durable, and the 
cheapest to keep.” And in the same chapter he refers his 
reader to the plates at the end of the book, where he has 
“ presented to view divers forms or plots for gardens.” In 
1697 he speaks of parterres, and his designs are very similar. 
Sir Thomas Hanmer, in notes for his proposed work on garden¬ 
ing, also uses the two words : “If the ground be spacious, 
the next adjacent quarters or parterres, as the French call 
them, are often of fine turf, but as low as any green to bowl 
