34 
House & Garden 
COLLECTING OLD-TIME GARDEN BOOKS 
From Ovid and Virgil up to the Early American Botanical Authors Is Spread 
a Vastly Interesting Field for the Collector 
“11 /T Y dream is of a Idbrary 
IVX in a Garden!” wrote 
Sieveking in his ‘‘Praise of 
Gardens”. 
“In the very center of the 
garden away from the house 
or cottage, but united to it by 
a pleached alley or pergola of 
vines or roses, an octagonal 
book-tower like Montaigne’s 
rises upon arches forming an 
arbour of scented shade. Be¬ 
tween the book-shelves, win¬ 
dows at ever}- airgle, as in 
Pliny’s Villa library, opening 
upon a Ijroad gallery supported 
by pillars of ‘faire carpenter’s 
work,’ around which cluster 
flowering creepers, follow the 
course of the sun in its play 
upon the landscape. Last stage 
of all a glass dome gives gaze 
upon the stars by night, and 
clouds by day.” 
I think if ever I should 
come to have my ideal Gar¬ 
den of Books, I would carry 
thither those precious vol¬ 
umes by old writers on the 
subject of what Francis Bacon 
was wont to call “the purest 
of human pleasures” and “the 
greatest refreshment to the 
spirits of man.” 
The acc^uisitive instinct so 
sadly lacking in many, happily 
finds in me a disciple con¬ 
vinced that collecting is a god¬ 
ly pursuit without which the 
world would be a dismal wil¬ 
derness of unexperienced joys, 
and that there surely is no 
nobler hobby than that of col¬ 
lecting old-time garden books. 
Eden’s Garden 
I do not know who, in the 
Realm of Gardening, was the 
first Court Historian; the writer 
of the Book of Genesis, I pre¬ 
sume. “.\nd the Lord God 
planted a garden eastward, in 
Eden; and there he put the 
man whom he had formed. 
And out of the ground made 
the Lord God to grow every 
tree that is pleasant to the 
sight, and good for food.” 
Sir Hugh Platt’s two-part 
duodecimo, The Garden of 
Eden, printed 1653-1660, is a 
good beginning for one’s en¬ 
lightenment. Would that my 
own copy bought for a shilling, 
had survived the vicissitudes 
The Theater of Plantes, by 
John Parkinson, London, 
1640 , with title page en¬ 
graved by William Marshall. 
Parkinson’s portrait is in 
the oval 
GARDNER TEALL 
PIC TO R E S 
iScmwfue^ullmdutft:. 
O P E R I S, 
Mlbctm 
of a tidal wave that I might 
cjuote therefrom for your de¬ 
lectation. I have not even good 
Master W. Coles’s ‘‘Adam in 
Eden, or Nature’s Paradise” 
which shed lustre on the pub¬ 
lishing world of 1657, nor yet 
Adam Speed’s “Adam out of 
Eden; or. An Abstract of Cer¬ 
tain Excellent Experiments 
Touching the Advancement of 
Husbandry”, which saw light 
in London in 1659. Perhaps 
it would prove disappointing, 
for Adam out of Eden would 
never have been as interesting 
as Adam in, and Adam Speed’s 
volume may, for aught I know, 
have nothing whatsoever to do 
with Eden, may have been 
taken up entirely with the 
commonplaceness of cabbages. 
Garden Classics 
But in the second part of 
Sir William Temple’s Aliscel- 
lanea one finds “Upon the 
Gardens of Epicurus; or. Of 
Gardening in the Year 1685”. 
Hazlitt (and I agree with 
him) considers this the best 
summary of gardening among 
the ancients which we have, 
therefore the subject from 
Eden-time is conveniently- 
bridged over. Those various 
rei rusticae scriptures—Virgil, 
Hesiod, Varro and the rest^— 
must not be neglected by the 
collector. A magnificent op¬ 
portunity in itself to accumu¬ 
late a glorious shelf of classics 
linking their destinies with 
gardening! Blessed be the 
Eclogues and the Georgies of 
Virgil. (Blessed be their trans¬ 
lators, too!) 
“Tityrus, thou where thou 
best under the covert of 
spreading beech, broodest on 
thy slim pipe over the Muse 
of the w'oodland. We leave 
our native borders and pleas¬ 
ure fields; we fly our native 
land, while thou, Tityrus, at 
ease in the shade teachest the 
woods to echo fair Amaryllis.” 
Thus Virgil’s Meliboeus be¬ 
gins to woo our interest. 
“What makes the cornfields 
glad; beneath what star it be¬ 
fits to upturn the ground, 
^Maecenas, and clasp the vine 
to her elm; the tending of 
oxen and the charge of the 
Portraits of Heinrich Kiil- 
Maurer and Albrecht Meyer, 
two noted ISth Century 
botanists which were taken 
from a ISth Century horti¬ 
cultural work 
