John Evelyn, from the day he began his lessons under the Friar in the porch of Wotton Church, was a curious observer of men and things, but especially was he devoted to all manners and styles of gardening.
Nothing was too small, too trivial to escape his notice; from the weather-cocks on the trees near Margate—put there on the days the farmers feasted their servants, to the interest he found in watching the first man he ever saw drink coffee.
The positions he held under Charles II. and James II. were many and varied, yet he found time to collect samples in Venice, and travel extensively, to write a Play, a treatise called: “Mundus Muliebris, or the Ladies’ Dressing Room, Unlocked,” and a pamphlet, called “Tyrannus, or the Mode,” in which he sought to make Charles II. dress like a Persian, and succeeded in so doing.
But above all these things he held his chiefest pleasure in seeing and talking of the arrangement of gardens, passing on this love to his son John, who, when a boy of fifteen, at Trinity College, Oxford, translated “Rapin, or Gardens,” the second book of which his father included in his second edition of “Sylva.”
His Majesty Charles II., to whom the “Sylva” is dedicated, was a monarch to whom justice has never been properly done. He is represented by pious but inaccurate historians, those men who for many years gave a false character of jovial good nature to that gross thief and sacrilegious monster, Henry VIII., as a King who spent most of his time in the Playhouse, or in talking trivialities with gay ladies, and in making witty remarks to all and sundry in his Court. The side of him that took interest in shipbuilding, navigation, astronomy, in the founding of the Royal Society, in the advancement of Art, in the minor matters of flower gardening and bee-keeping is nearly always suppressed. It was largely through his interest in this volume of Evelyn’s that the Royal forests were properly replanted; and it was in a great measure due to Royal interest that the parks and estates of the noblemen of England became famous in after years for their beautiful timber.
In that part of the “Sylva” dealing with forest trees, there were a hundred hints to all lovers of nature and of gardens, for your good gardener is a man very near in his nature to a good strong tree, and loves to observe the play of light and shade in the branches of those that give shade to his garden walks.
Evelyn tells us how the Ash is the sweetest of forest fuelling, and the fittest for Ladies’ Chambers, also for the building of Arbours, the staking of Espaliers, and the making of Poles. The white rot of it makes a ground for the Sweet-powder used by gallants. He tries to introduce the Chestnut as food, saying how it is a good, lusty and masculine food for Rustics; and commenting on the fact that the best tables in France and Italy make them a service. He tells us how the water in which Walnut husks and leaves are boiled poured on the carpet of walks and bowling-greens infallibly kills the worms without hurting the grass. That, by the way, is a matter for discussion among gardeners, seeing that some say that the movements of worms from below the surface to their cast on the lawn lets air among the grass roots and is good for them.
He tells us how the Horn-beam makes the stateliest hedge for long garden walks. He advises us how to make wine of the Birch, Ash, Elder, Oak, Crab and Bramble. He praises the Service-Tree, and the Eugh, and the Jasmine, saying of this last how one sorry tree in Paris where they grow “has been worth to a poor woman, near twenty shillings a year.”
All this and much besides of diverting and instructive reading, varied with remarks on the gardens of his friends and acquaintances, as when he “cannot but applaud the worthy Industry of old Sir Harbotle Grimstone, who (I am told) from a very small Nursery of Acorns which he sowed in the neglected corners of his ground, did draw forth such numbers of Oaks of competent growth; as being planted about his Fields in even and uniform rows, about one hundred foot from the Hedges; bush’d and well water’d till they had sufficiently fix’d themselves, did wonderfully improve both the beauty, and the value of his Demeasnes,” for the honour and glory of filling England with fine trees and gardens to improve, what he calls—the Landskip.
The exigencies of the present moment when Imperial Finance threatens to tax all good parks and orchards out of existence, and to make all fine flower gardens out of use, except to the enormously wealthy, makes the “Gard’ners Calendar” all the more interesting as showing what manner of flowers, fruits, and vegetables were in use in the Seventeenth Century, and the means employed to grow and preserve them.