As a matter of curiosity, it has been deemed expedient, to add a list of the fruits cultivated in our English Gardens in the year 1573. This list is taken from Tusser’s Five hundred points of good Husbandry.
Thomas Tusser, who had received a liberal education at Eton school, and at Trinity hall, Cambridge, lived many years as a farmer in Suffolk and Norfolk. He afterwards removed to London, where he published in 1557, the first edition of his work, under the title of “One hundred points of good husbandry.”
In his fourth edition, from which this list is taken, he first introduced the subject of Gardening, and has given us not only a list of the fruits, but also of all the plants then cultivated in our gardens, either for pleasure or profit, under the following heads:—
“Seedes and herbes for the kychen, herbes and roots for sallets and sauce, herbes and rootes to boyle or to butter, strewing herbes of all sorts, herbes, branches, and flowers for windowes and pots, herbs to still in summer, necessarie herbes to grow in the gardens for physick not reherst before.”
This list consists of more than 150 species besides the following fruits:—
Apple Trees of all sorts—Apricots
Barberries—Bullass, black and white
Cherries, red and black—Chesnuts—Cornet Plums[[2]]
Damsons, white and black