gardens within reach of the Londoner have half their manifold attractions. But besides their general they have a very special interest. In few places can we trace so well the history of English gardening.
When Wolsey first obtained the manor, he set himself to make gardens such as he should be able to find repose in after the long labours of his busy days. There in "therber" he would say his office; and he would daily watch the planting and the weeding, of which the records give such quaint particulars. Strong walls surrounded this irregular garden. It was a place of herbs and hedges, with alleys and long shaded walks—the medieval garden of which we know so little. When Henry VIII. took the Court for his own, great alterations were carried out. The pleasaunce became "Italianate," and statues of "kynges and queenys beestes" were set up. The accounts show continual placing of trees in the King's great orchard and the "triangle," of roses, gillyflowers, sweet-williams, violets, and primroses, and setting the divisions with low walls, on which stood capering or rampant beasts in stone. At every convenient spot stood a sundial.
Of the Tudor garden at Hampton Court, only the very smallest specimens remain. There is the quaint fountain still standing in the midst of a trim-set design of walks and borders, in the hedge-surrounded plot of low ground that lies between the "banqueting-house" of William III., and the greenhouse, which is sometimes mistakenly termed the orangery.
