Renaissance Grouping of Separate Gardens: The Garden of Euphues

Although Portland, a Dutchman, was nominally in charge of the Royal Gardens of England, the practical gardeners at this time gradually ceased to be foreigners. After the death of the Mollets in 1666 John Rose was appointed Charles II's gardener. We know little of Rose save that he was the protege of the Earl of Essex, whose garden at Cashiobury was for a while the best known in England, that he was a very good practical gardener, and that he is supposed to have studied for a while under Le Notre. Here for the first time is a royal gardener who is also a horticulturist. The latter part of the seventeenth century is the period of the great commercial gardener rather than of the great artist gardener. In 1681 was founded at Brompton, on the ground now burdened with the galaxy of museums at the foot of Exhibition Road, the famous Brompton Nursery of London and Wise,i who first made the sup-plying of plants for gardens into big business. Here were maintained vast magazines of box and yew and hornbeam and lime, the clothing reserve for the body of England. London and Wise were both Englishmen, and though tradesmen rather than artists, their advent ended the period of foreign dominance. Their real contribution was that they enabled their clients to make a greater show at a lesser cost, which ensured that big gardens became bigger and that there were more of them. Many of the gardens they produced were versions of French models, copies of the Mollets' drawings or of even earlier plans such as those of du Cerceau. Under their guidance the various current versions of the rectangular garden drifted on without inspiration. As far as can be seen there was no originality in their work and even the famous bastion parterre at Blenheim was preceded by and probably based upon the castle garden of the Duc d'Enghien in Belgium. In fact, many of the great gardens engraved by Kipp and Knyff at this time, such as Badminton and Chatsworth, are really retrogressive in plan. In basic idea they are derived from the French, but they lack the French sense of rhythm and proportion and aggressive unity of purpose. We are on our way back to the early Renaissance grouping of many separate gardens, although on a vastly greater scale. But gradually a national type of variation began to be apparent, though it was evident at this stage because of its negative rather than its positive characteristics. From 1690 to 1726 the axial emphasis of the French garden in England, never strong, became progressively lessened.