already made. The gate at the north end of this is the beautiful "Flower-pot Gate," of which the piers are decorated with William's initials and crown, and are surmounted by putti bearing baskets of flowers.
In the centre of the great garden was placed the large fountain which breaks the Broad Walk that leads from the east front to the Long Water. Four hundred of the limes which had been planted by Charles II. were moved so as to form a semicircle skirting the canal, which was now completed. The garden thus enclosed became known as "The Great Parterre." The elaborate parterre work, in which a complicated design was carried out in an arrangement of box-edged beds, filled with different coloured earths, with grass plots, and sanded walks of different widths, and decorated by jars full of flowers, by small fountains, and little pieces of statuary, was completed before the King's death, and marked the culmination of the formal garden at Hampton Court. The great gardeners, London and Wise, themselves literary authorities as well as practical workmen, may fitly have regarded this as their chef-d'œuvre.
The changes thus completed were not permanent, but nothing nearly so revolutionary has been attempted since the Dutch sovereign died.
In 1700 one of the chief memorials of the Tudor garden was destroyed—the "Mount," which had been set as the centre of Henry VIII.'s Italian garden. Many trees were at the same time transferred from the
