298 LONDON PARKS © GARDENS 
place of their own, where they work, dig, and plant. 
Down the centre runs a wide gravel walk, with a deep 
herbaceous border along either side, sweet-scented pinks 
and low-growing plants near the front, then a long row 
of spiderwort, and behind that a regiment of magnificent 
hollyhocks. The spiderwort or Tradescantia is a flower 
eminently suited to London gardens, not only because it 
seems to withstand any amount of smoke and bad air, 
but because of its association with the famous garden in 
Lambeth, where it was first grown. Parkinson, in 1629, 
gives the history of his friend’s introduction of the plant. 
“ The Spiderwort,” he writes, “ is of late knowledge, and 
for it the Christian World is indebted unto that painfull 
industrious searcher, and lover of all nature’s varieties, 
John Tradescant (sometimes belonging to the Right 
Honourable Lord Robert Earle of Salisbury, Lord 
Treasurer of England in his time, and unto the Right 
Honourable the Lord Wotton at Canterbury in Kent, 
and lastly unto the late Duke of Buckingham), who first 
received it of a friend, that brought it out of Virginia, 
thinking it to bee the Silke Grasse that groweth there, 
and hath imparted hereof, as of many other things, 
both to me and others.” “Unto this plant I confess I 
first imposed the name . . . which untill some can finde 
a more proper, I desire may still continue . . . John 
Tradescant’s Spider Wort of Virginia.” Courageous as 
herbalists generally were in tasting plants, Parkinson 
confesses there had “not beene any tryall made of the 
properties ” or “ vertues.” Luckily no one has dis¬ 
puted Parkinson’s choice of a name, and his friend’s 
memory is still preserved. The plant is not confined 
to Virginia, but grows much further into the Wild West, 
and is common in Kansas, Nebraska, and distant States. 
