DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49977#0134
112
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND.
arcades, already referred to, and does not seem to be at all
a new idea of Bacon’s. Thomas Hill * discusses the various
modes of fencing round a garden. A paling of “ drie thorne ”
and willow he calls a “ dead or rough inclosure.” He refers
to the Romans for examples of the alternative of digging a
ditch to surround the garden, but “the general way” is a
“natural inclosure,” a hedge of “white thorne artely laide t
in a few years with diligence it waxeth so thicke and strong,
that hardly any person can enter into the ground, sailing by
the garden-door ; yet in sundrie garden groundes, the hedges
[are] framed with the privet tree, although far weaker in
resistance, which at this day are made the stronger through
yearly cutting, both aboue and by the sides.” He gives a
quaint method for planting a hedge. The gardener is to
collect the berries of briar, brambles, white-thorne, gooseberries
and barberries, steep the seeds in a mixture of meal, and
set them to keep until the spring, in an old rope, “a long
worn roape . . . being in a manner starke rotten.” “Then, in
the spring, to plant the rope in two furrows, a foot and a
half deep, and three feet apart. . . . The seedes thus covered
with diligence shall appeare within a month, either -more or
less ”—■“ which in a few years will grow to a most strong
defence of the garden or field.” These old gardeners had
great faith in all their operations, and but rarely in their works
do we find any allusion to possible failure !
Yews were much employed for hedges, but more for walks
and shelter within the gardens, than to form the outer enclosure.
In the larger gardens there were two or three gates in the walls,
well designed, with handsome stone piers surmounted with balls
or the owner’s crest, and wrought-iron gates of elaborate pattern ;
or else there was one fine gate at the principal entrance, the
rest being smaller and less pretentious, merely “ a planched
gate,”t or “little door.” The main principle of a garden was
still that it should be a “ garth,” a yard, or enclosure; the idea of
such a thing as a practically unenclosed garden had not, as yet,.
* Gardener’s Labyrinth, 1608.
Measure for Measure, act iv. scene 1.
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND.
arcades, already referred to, and does not seem to be at all
a new idea of Bacon’s. Thomas Hill * discusses the various
modes of fencing round a garden. A paling of “ drie thorne ”
and willow he calls a “ dead or rough inclosure.” He refers
to the Romans for examples of the alternative of digging a
ditch to surround the garden, but “the general way” is a
“natural inclosure,” a hedge of “white thorne artely laide t
in a few years with diligence it waxeth so thicke and strong,
that hardly any person can enter into the ground, sailing by
the garden-door ; yet in sundrie garden groundes, the hedges
[are] framed with the privet tree, although far weaker in
resistance, which at this day are made the stronger through
yearly cutting, both aboue and by the sides.” He gives a
quaint method for planting a hedge. The gardener is to
collect the berries of briar, brambles, white-thorne, gooseberries
and barberries, steep the seeds in a mixture of meal, and
set them to keep until the spring, in an old rope, “a long
worn roape . . . being in a manner starke rotten.” “Then, in
the spring, to plant the rope in two furrows, a foot and a
half deep, and three feet apart. . . . The seedes thus covered
with diligence shall appeare within a month, either -more or
less ”—■“ which in a few years will grow to a most strong
defence of the garden or field.” These old gardeners had
great faith in all their operations, and but rarely in their works
do we find any allusion to possible failure !
Yews were much employed for hedges, but more for walks
and shelter within the gardens, than to form the outer enclosure.
In the larger gardens there were two or three gates in the walls,
well designed, with handsome stone piers surmounted with balls
or the owner’s crest, and wrought-iron gates of elaborate pattern ;
or else there was one fine gate at the principal entrance, the
rest being smaller and less pretentious, merely “ a planched
gate,”t or “little door.” The main principle of a garden was
still that it should be a “ garth,” a yard, or enclosure; the idea of
such a thing as a practically unenclosed garden had not, as yet,.
* Gardener’s Labyrinth, 1608.
Measure for Measure, act iv. scene 1.