208 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
privy garden and famous fountain/’ A description of the 
gardens near London in 1691, by Gibson, has been preserved. 1 
He enumerates twenty-eight gardens, five of those being 
nursery-gardens—the Brompton Nursery, one “ Clements ” at 
Mile End, and Ricketts, Pearson and Darby, all three at 
Hoxton. Some of the gardens are more distant from London, 
as Hampton Court, Sir Henry Capel’s at Kew, and Sir William 
Temple’s at Sheen. At Beddington, where the first orange 
trees in England had been planted by the Carew family, they 
had been so well taken care of that it still held the foremost 
place among the orangeries in this country. This orangery 
was two hundred feet long, and the trees were about thirteen 
feet high, and in one year yielded ten thousand oranges. 
Gibson also relates that the Queen Dowager, at Hammer¬ 
smith, had a good greenhouse, “ but was not for curious plants 
or flowers ” ; however, her gardener, Monsieur Hermon Van 
Guine, raised orange and lemon trees, which he had “ to dispose 
of.” Arlington garden was “ a fair plat.” Sir Thomas Cooke’s, 
at Hackney, 2 though very large, was still being added to ; Lord 
Ranelagh’s was “ elegantly-designed,” though “ but newly- 
made.” The Archbishop, at Lambeth, was then improving the 
garden there, and putting up a greenhouse “ of three rooms, the 
middle having a stove under it;—the foresides of the rooms are 
almost all glass, the roof covered with lead.” Gibson only 
mentions those gardens which he visited in December, 1691 ; 
others equally well known he passes over. He does not notice 
the large nursery between Spitalfields and Whitechapel, the 
owner of which Meager refers to as " my very Loving friend 
Captain Qarrle,” and gives a long list of fruit-trees, any one of 
which this friend can “ furnish,” besides “ divers other rare 
and choice plants.” 3 He omits, also, Essex House in the Strand, 
and Somerset House ; also Southampton House, Bloomsbury, 
where the gardens were designed by Lord William Russell, 
who was beheaded in 1683. The garden at Fulham, which had 
1 Printed in the Archceologia, 1794, and reprinted in Hazlitt, Glean¬ 
ings in Old Garden Literature, 1887. 
2 Rams Chapel was built in 1723 on part of the site of this garden. In 
a deed, dated July 20th, 1704, in the possession of the chapel authorities, 
two summer-houses are mentioned, one of which is used as the vestry. 
3 Leonard Meager, The English Gardener, 1688, p. 60. 
