DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
239 
supply of vegetables in England ; but when anything special, 
anything early, or out of season, was wanted on great festive 
occasions, it was procured from abroad, chiefly from Holland. 
This induced enterprising gardeners, early in the eighteenth 
century, to make attempts at forcing greens and salads, aspara¬ 
gus and cucumbers. The first to raise the latter in the autumn 
for fruiting in winter was Fowler, gardener to Sir N. Gould, 
at Stoke Newington. He presented George I. with two fine 
cucumbers on New Years Day, 1721. Samuel Collins, in 
1717, wrote a Treatise on the culture of melons and cucumbers, 
suggesting various glasses and frames for their protection. 
The following is quoted from Bradley, and gives the names of 
some of the pioneers in early forcing : “ The first which are 
Kitchen Gardens and exceed all the other gardens in Europe 
for wholesome Produce and variety of Herbs are those at the 
Neat-Houses near Tuttle-fields, Westminster, which abound in 
Salads, early Cucumbers, Colliflowers, Melons, Winter Aspara¬ 
gus, and almost every Herb fitting the Table ; and I think 
there is no where so good a school for a Kitchen gardener as 
this Place ; tho’ Battersea affords the largest natural Asparagus 
and the earliest Cabbages. Again, the Gardens about Ham¬ 
mersmith are as famous for Strawberries, Rasberries, Currants, 
Gooseberries, and such like ; and if early Fruit is our Desire 
Mr. Millet’s, at North End, near the same Place, affords us 
Cherries, Apricocks, and Curiosities of those kinds, some 
months before the Natural Season.” Another good nursery¬ 
man near London was Nicholas Parker at Chiswick. He is 
highly recommended by Lawrence as known to all men for his 
“ honesty, skill, and integrity,” which seems more than could 
be said of all in the same trade. They were inclined to cheat 
and send out inferior varieties of fruit, in the place of those 
ordered by the purchaser, “ a dry insipid Nectorine ” instead of 
“ an old Newington Peach, or instead of a rich French Pear 
a gritty choak-pear or Warden.” 1 
Kalm, the great Swedish horticulturalist, after whom the 
genus Kalmia was named, who passed through England on his 
way to America, in 1748, was struck by the market-gardens and 
1 The Clergyman's Recreation. John Lawrence, Rector of Yelver- 
toft, Northamptonshire, 1714. 
