214 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
Park he laid out a garden in the Dutch style. It is not to be 
wondered at, that the statesman who negotiated the Triple 
Alliance should prefer the taste of the Netherlands to that of 
France, but he was large-minded enough to get what was good 
from France also. He prided himself on having introduced 
four new sorts of grapes into England : (i) The “ Arboyse from 
Franche Compte, which is a small white grape ... it agrees 
well with our climate ... it is the most delicious of all grapes 
that are not muscat. (2) The Burgundy, which is a grizelin, 
or pale red, and of all others surest to ripen in our climate, so 
that I have never known them to fail one summer these 15 
years, when all others have ; and have had it very good upon 
an east wall. (3) A Black Muscat, which is called the Dowager, 
and ripens as well as the common white grape. (4) The 
Grizelin Frontignac, the noblest of all grapes I ever ate in 
England, but it requires the hottest wall and the sharpest 
gravel, and must be favoured by the summer too, to be very 
good.” 1 Unlike the proud possessor of the “ Tulipe noire,” or 
Alphonse Karr’s enthusiastic old savants, 2 who fought over a 
Buddlea, Temple was very generous in distributing the vines 
he introduced, for he writes : “ I ever thought of all things of 
this kind the commoner they are made the better.” 
Temple turned his attention chiefly to fruit culture. Of 
flowers he says : “ I only pleased myself with seeing or smelling 
them, and not troubled myself with the care, which is more the 
ladies’ part than the man’s.” Perhaps he left the floral part of 
his garden to his charming wife, Dorothy Osborne. In her 
delightfully fresh and witty love-letters to Temple during the 
long years of their engagement, there is one reference which is 
enough to show that she, too, took an interest in gardening. She 
writes, in 1654, of Sir Samuel Luke, a neighbour of hers at 
Chick Sands, in Bedfordshire : “ But of late I know not how 
Sir Sam has grown so kind as to send to me for some things 
he desired out of this garden, and withal made the offer of 
what was in his, which I had reason to take for a high favour, 
for he is a nice florist.” 
1 This grape is now rarely seen. There is a plant (grown under glass) 
at Berwick, near Shrewsbury. 
2 Autour de mon Jar din. 
