Asparagus was first planted in England in the year 1662, in the reign of Charles II. Artichokes were first introduced about the same time. Cos lettuces were originally brought from the island of Cos, near Rhodes, in the Mediterranean. Turnips were brought into this country from Hanover. In the time of Henry VIII, several kinds of fruits and plants were cultivated in England, as apricots, and a fine gooseberry from Flanders; also salads, carrots, and other edible roots. These vegetables were before this period imported from Holland and Flanders. So that Queen Catherine, to procure a salad, had to dispatch a messenger to fetch it from those countries. Fruit seems to have been scarce in the time of Henry VII. In an original manuscript, signed by himself, and kept in the Remembrance office, it appears that apples were not less than one or two shillings each, and that a red one cost two shillings. The great plenty and variety of vegetables displayed upon modern tables, through every month in the year, evidently shows what superior blessings we enjoy, in this respect, compared with those of our forefathers.
Some of the flowers introduced into our gardens, and now cultivated either on account of their beauty, or the pleasantness of their smell, have been procured from plants which grew wild, and which have been changed, or, according to the opinion of florists, improved by the art of the gardener. The greater part of them however came originally from distant countries, where they grow in as great perfection as ours, without the assistance of man. It is probable that the modern taste for flowers came from Persia to Constantinople, and was imported thence to Europe for the first time, in the sixteenth century. At any rate, many of the productions of our flower-gardens were conveyed to us by that channel. Clusius and his friends, in particular, contributed very much to excite this taste; and the new plants brought from both the Indies by travellers who frequently visited these countries, tended to increase it. That period also produced some skilful gardeners, who carried on a considerable trade in the roots and seeds of flowers; and these, likewise assisted to render it more general. Among these were John and Vespasian Robin, gardeners to Henry IV, of France, and Emanuel Sweert, gardener to the emperor Rodolphus II, from whom the botanists of that time procured many rarities, as appears from different passages of their works.