My Lord Ranelagh’s Garden being but lately made, the plants are but small, but the plants, borders, and walks are curiously kept, and elegantly designed, having the advantage of opening into Chelsea college walks. The kitchen garden there lies very fine, with walks and seats, one of which, being large and covered, was then under the hands of a curious painter. The house there is very fine within, all the rooms being wainscoted with Norway oak, and all the chimneys adorned with carving, as in the council-chamber in Chelsea College.

Arlington Garden, being now in the hands of my lord of Devonshire, is a fair place, with good walks, both airy and shady. There are six of the greatest earthern pots that are anywhere else, being at least two feet over within the edge: but they stand abroad, and have nothing in them but the tree holy-oke, an indifferent plant, which grows well enough in the ground. Their greenhouse is very well, and their green-yard excels: but their greens are not so bright and clean as farther off in the country, as if they suffered something from the smutty air of the town.

Kensington Gardens are not great nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtles, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to Mr. London’s and Mr. Wise’s greenhouse at Brompton Park, a little mile from them. But the walks and grass laid very fine, and they were digging up a flat of four or five acres to enlarge their garden.

The Queen Dowager’s Garden, at Hammersmith, has a good greenhouse, with a high erected front to the South, whence the roof falls backward. The house is well stored with greens of common kinds: but the Queen not being for curious plants or flowers, they want of the most curious sorts of greens, and in the garden there is little of value but wall trees: though the gardener there, Monsieur Hermon Van Guine, is a man of great skill and industry, having raised great numbers of orange and lemon trees by inoculation, with myrtles, Roman bayes, and other greens of pretty shapes which he has to dispose of.

Sir Thomas Cooke’s Garden at Hackney is very large, and not so fine at present, because of his intending to be at three thousand pounds charge with it this next summer, as his gardener said. There are two greenhouses in it, but the greens are not extraordinary, for one of the roofs, being made a receptacle for water, overcharged with weight, fell down last year upon the greens, and made a great destruction among the trees and pots. In one part of it is a warren, containing about two acres, very full of coneys, though there was but a couple put in a few years since. There is a pond or a mote round about them, and on the outside of that a brick wall four feet high, both which I think will not keep them within their compass. There is a large fish-pond lying on the South to a brick wall, which is finely clad with philaria. Water brought from far in pipes furnishes his several ponds as they want it.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Garden at Lambeth has little in it but walks, the late archbishop not delighting in one, but they are now making them better: and they have already made a greenhouse, one of the finest and costliest about the town. It is of three rooms, the middle having a stove under it: the forsides of the room are almost all glass, the roof covered with lead, the whole part (to adorn the building) rising gavel wise higher than the rest: but it is placed so near Lambeth church that the sun shines most on it in winter after eleven o’clock: a fault owned by the gardener, but not thought on by the contrivers. Most of the greens are oranges and lemons, which have very large ripe fruit on them.

Mr. Evelyn had a pleasant villa at Deptford, a fine garden for walks and hedges (especially his holly on which he writes of in his Sylva) and a pretty little greenhouse with an indifferent stock in it. In this garden he has four large round philarias, smooth clipped, raised on a single stalk from the ground, a fashion now much used. Part of his garden is very woody and shady for walking: but his garden not being walled, has little of the best fruits.”

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