June, 1920 
35 
Remberti, a noted Dutch botanist, 
as pictured in a rare iSi/z Cen¬ 
tury work on horticulture 
keeper of a flock; and all the skill of 
thrifty; of this will I begin to sing.” 
Thus Virgil begins his Georgies. 
In Old Italian Gardens, Vernon Lee 
writes, “I should be curious to know 
something of early Italian gardens long 
ago; long before the magnificence of 
Roman Caesars had reappeared, with 
their rapacity and pride, in the cardinals 
and princes of the 16th and 17th Cen¬ 
turies. I imagine those beginnings to 
have been humble; the garden of the 
early middle ages to have been a thing 
more for utility than pleasure, and not 
at all for ostentation. For the garden of 
the castle is necessarily small; and the 
plot of ground between the inner and 
outer rows of walls, where corn and hay 
might be grown for the horses, is not 
likely to be given up exclusively to her 
ladyship’s lilies and gilly flowers; salads 
and roots must grow there, and onions 
and leeks, for it is not always convenient 
to get vegetables from the villages below, 
particularly when there are enemies or 
disbanded pillaging mercenaries about; 
hence, also, there will be fewer roses 
than vines, pears, or apples, spaliered 
against the castle wall.” 
Medieval Traditions 
Petrus de Crescentiis of Bologna, a 
writer of the medieval period did much 
to inform us of the gardening tradition 
of his time. Lucky is the collector who 
comes across a copy of his Ruralia Com- 
moda, printed in Florence in 1471. He 
did much to carry on the tradition of the 
noble art upon which the Aledici, Far- 
nese, Aldobrandini, Borghese and the 
rest of the “crimson cardinals and pur¬ 
ple princes” of the Italian Renaissance 
were to seize and turn to their own mag¬ 
nificence. A whole literature of con¬ 
temporary product concerns itself with 
the gardens of these princely houses. I 
am promised The Gardens of Rome, with 
their plans raised and seen in perspective, 
drawm and engraved, by Giov. Battista 
Falda, at the printing-house of Gio. 
Giacomo de Rossi, at the sign of Paris, 
near the church of Peace in Rome. I 
have watched ever}^ post for it these six 
years—it was six years ago it was prom¬ 
ised me!—but mv faith is great. 
i 
Title page of Le Jardinier Frangois, engraved by F. 
Chauveau, showing a glimpse of a formal garden in 
old France, with its terrace steps, walls and fountain 
Something of the design in old French gardens can 
be seen in this vignette by Sebastien Leclerc, 1670. 
The formal pattern was in keeping with the archi¬ 
tecture of the times 
ANDREAS GERARDVS. 
Andreas Gerardus was the author 
of the famous Herbal. He is 
shown here in an early woodcut 
But these six years have not been 
idle ones, notwithstanding. Their pass¬ 
ing has reminded me of the delectable 
Garden Calendars of older days, and so 
I have not forgotten to add John Evelyn’s 
Kalendarium Hortense in the first edi¬ 
tion of 1664 to my collection. I hope 
to complete the ten issues that follow it 
down to 1664. 
There are other garden books dear to 
the collector’s heart. The Compleat Gar- 
d’ner; or. Directions for Cultivating and 
Right-ordering of Fruit-Gardens and 
Kitchen-Gardens, a folio printed in Lon¬ 
don, 1693, of which work an abridge¬ 
ment by George London and Henry Wise 
appeared in 1699; also Sylva, his famous 
discourse on forestry issued in 1644, and 
his translation of The French Gardener, 
the first edition of which appeared in 
1658, a third in 1675. The preface to 
this book has this from Evelyn: “I ad¬ 
vertize the reader, that what I have 
couched in four sections at the end of 
this volume, under the name of Appen¬ 
dix, is but a part of the tliird Treatise 
in the Original; there remaining three 
Chapters more concerning preserving of 
fruits with sugar, which I have hereto¬ 
fore expressly omitted, because it is a 
mystery that I am assured by a lady 
(who is a person of quality, and curious 
in that art) that there is nothing extraor¬ 
dinary amongst them, but what the fair 
sex do infinitely exceeds, whenever they 
pleasure to divertise themselves in that 
sweet enjoyment.” Thus was the English 
jampot preserved against the onslaught 
of French recipes. 
Gardening Calendars 
Although Evelyn’s Kalendarium Hor¬ 
tense has been held to be the first garden 
calendar in English, we must not over¬ 
look the fact that Francis Bacon’s essay. 
Of Gardens, anticipated Evelyn’s idea 
somewhat. “I do hold it in the royal 
ordering of gardens, there ought to be 
gardens for all the months of the year, 
in which severally things of beauty may 
be then in season,” says he on leading 
the reader from month to month. 
With John Worlidge’s Systema Horti- 
culturae (1677) appeared the first sys- 
(Continued on page 68) 
