The Three Divisions: The Garden of Euphues

The area is to be thirty acres divided into three parts. The first part by the house was equivalent to what in a Le Notre plan would have been the home terrace or parterre and served the same function, acting as a base upon which the design was formed and as a link between the building and the garden proper. This first section was nothing but lawn... `because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely short', and because it provided a pleasant open path-way from the house to the main garden, which could be used when the weather was fine but not too hot. Here at this first division of the garden is the native insular note, an uncompromising rejection of the French formula... `As for the making of knots, or figures, with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side which the garden stands, they be but toys'... and in its room appears the consistently characteristic feature of English gardening, the lawn of grass. But although this is an ideal garden and not the description of one actually made, Bacon is concerned with real pleasures and real pains and provides walks hedged and covered with trellis-work down either side of the lawn, so that if the weather is hot the garden can be reached in comfort. This was a provision the French vista garden failed to make. The garden proper lies in the second division and is to consist of twelve acres. It is to be square and must be surrounded with covered alleys of hedge and trellis-work which shall have above them in the arches little turrets `to receive a cage of birds'... or.... `broad plates of round coloured glass, gilt, for the sun to play upon'.