An Informal Thatched Shelter

That landscape gardening was a subject of serious study can be gathered from the number of books written at this period. There were books by Dr. Andrew Borde, Thomas Hill, Didymus Mountaine and Bacon. In all these writers there is evidence that they were swayed by the Italian fashion, although at the same time they pronounce the true English delight in trees and flowers for their own sake. The open acceptance of their works proves that the subject was one that appealed to many readers. The Renaissance added little to the garden designer's materials save knots, mazes, labyrinths and dovecotes, also bowling greens and alleys. The latter were a decided acquisition, since they gave oc casion for level green spaces which count for so much in the mod ern tennis and croquet lawns, and are always a restful note wherever found. The most valuable part of Hill's book is the light it throws upon the refined Englishman's garden in the i6th cen tury and the woodcut illustrations. These depict the gardens as a circumscribed rectangular space with a broad walk down the mid dle and a similar broad walk all round within the enclosing wall, the two large equal spaces being subdivided by narrow paths into a number of smaller rectangular plots, with the maze, the laby rinth or any of the various knots occupying each or all of them as fancy dictated.

Owing, no doubt, to their being enamoured of the Italian man ner, neither Borde, Hill nor Mountaine's books are inspiring in their style, but in Gervase Markham, and with him may be asso ciated William Lawson, we begin to break away from Italian ped antry and find men who wrote from the sense of pleasure de rived from gardens rather than from the standpoint of garden theorists. Furthermore, they wrote in quaint Elizabethan prose, with its old-world charm imbued with a sense of what is beautiful in nature. Markham's works were deservedly popular and un doubtedly did much to mould the English taste and preferences in garden design. One of his books went through 15 editions. He deals with the farm as well as the garden, directing where the stables, cow-houses, swine-cotes, barns and poultry-houses were to be placed, also the lodges. As yet there is no suggestion of the landscape treatment as we know it. Even though Borde and Markham go beyond the bounds of the gardener's realm, and branch out into the park and the farm-buildings and the lodges, everything they deal with is angular and formal. The garden, the kitchen garden as well as the orchard, was to be confined within high walls or a hedge and ditch. These pioneers adventured out into the domain claimed by the modern landscapist, who is often called in to advise upon a scheme of residence including mansion, dower-house, gardens and park shelters, plantations, lodges, farm buildings, stables and garage, water-supply, electricity, sewage scheme, etc. When wisely directed a proprietor will settle the site and disposition of each and all of these policies before a sod is cut or a stone is laid.

Contemporary with the foregoing writers there appeared a group of ten or a dozen writers of herbals, the most notable being John Gerard and John Parkinson. Gerard's book is a great folio

of over 600 pages, published in 1597. The value of these writers is that they fostered the innate love of the country and the open face of nature in general, stimulating the imagination by their method of expressing their pleasures in the teeming life around them. Moreover, they were the foster-parents of modern botanical gardens, such as Kew and Oxford and the Apothecaries garden at Chelsea, and indirectly to such ventures as the Royal Horticul tural Society's gardens at Wisley, for several of these writers, in cluding Gerard, ran physic or botanical gardens. Undoubtedly, there was during the i 7th century a generally accepted principle of design in the garden, everything therein being square and geometrically set out, as may be gathered from all or most of the writers mentioned, so that the country gentleman could lay out his garden himself on traditional lines with very few variations.

Thus matters continued up to the Civil War, which marked a period of garden destruction by the Puritans, until the Restora tion, when once more foreign fashion came to dominate the simple English taste. The lavish extravagance of Louis XIV. of France could not but have its effects upon Charles II. who was in intimate relations with that monarch and his splendid court, and it is re corded that he or his nobility invited Le Notre, the genius of the gardens of Versailles, to England. These imported ideas might induce the rank and file of stolid English country gentlemen to adopt a more comprehensive style of design and enlarge their ideas, but such pretentiousness, including sumptuous fountains and white marble sculpture, was not in the tradition of Markham and Lawson, with their established national taste, nor of John Worlidge, who succeeded them.

In the sequence of events the next phase was the Dutch style introduced from Holland by William and Mary. The Dutch love of quaintness was responsible for an exaggeration in topiary work, thus reducing to ridicule a practice which had served well for centuries when kept within legitimate bounds. The apostles of this departure were London and Wise, who ran a large nursery at Brompton. Wise, influenced by the Le Notre school, was in prac tice before the Restoration, and planned the chestnut avenue in Bushey Park, 'in. long and 6oft. wide, with four additional rows of limes on either side terminated by the great "Diana" basin at Hampton Court, 400f t. in diameter. Formalism was now reduced to a series of rules and a few variations upon stock recipes which foreshadowed its break-up. It was during this period that the gardens at Levens, Westmorland, were laid out, which are to-day the essence of quaintness, and have a certain richness of their own when the box-edged borders are full of bloom; nevertheless, it is easy to understand how soon such picture gardens would pall if there were many of them.