These gardens have seen many changes during the centuries of the Palace's history, changes largely from one kind of formality to another, judging from the plans of them at various times. As I have said that the majority of visitors enter the Palace precincts by way of the Western Trophy Gate, and as such visitors would naturally reach the grounds by the eastern entrance beyond the cloistered Fountain Court, it may be well to say something first of the eastern gardens--which certainly, in summer, form the most florally gorgeous part of the whole. We come out here in the middle of the Broad Walk, which stretches from near the Kingston Road to the Thames' side. In front of us, bordered by old yew trees, are gravel walks radiating to the House or Home Park, the centre one leading, round a fountain pond starred in summer with lovely water lilies of various colours, to the head of the Long Canal, where are many water fowl--swans, geese, and ducks of different species--expectant of the visitors' contributions of bread or biscuit.
Right and left as we emerge from the Palace the Broad Walk stretches, inviting us in each direction with a brilliant display of many coloured flowers--more especially in spring and early summer, when the gardens, attractive at all times, are perhaps at their very best. Old plans of the grounds of Hampton Court show that these eastern gardens have seen the greatest changes during successive centuries. At one time the Long Canal stretched much closer to the Palace, and after it was shortened the intervening gardens were for a period a veritable maze of intricate ornamental beds with small fountains dotted about them; at another time they showed an array of formally cut pyramidal evergreens disposed along the sides of the walks.
It was probably the coming of William and Mary to Hampton Court that caused special attention to be paid to the grounds, for Queen Mary appears to have been greatly interested in the matter. Many and various as have been the re-plannings it may be believed that never have the gardens looked better than at present, when taste in things floricultural has broken away from the formalism of scroll-pattern borders and indulgence in the eccentricities of topiarian art--is even, it is to be hoped, on the way to free itself finally from the ugliness of "carpet bedding"--when plants are largely grouped and massed instead of being placed in alternate kinds at regular intervals in geometrical patterns. Present day taste with its appreciation of garden colour, of masses and groups of particular kinds, instead of isolated plants dotted about with irritating regularity, is found beautifully exemplified in the numerous beds cut in the lawns of the eastern gardens, and in the long borders which run north and south of the palace along one side of the Broad Walk. Here, from the beginning of the year, when the patches of cerulean, "glory of the snow", and of low-growing irises of a deeper blue, begin that procession which is soon to develop into a very pageantry of colour--from when myriad yellow crocuses first star the lawns with gold in February--is given a succession of changes that may well tempt the lover of gardens to Hampton Court again and again. These beds and borders with their succession of spring bulbs and summer flowers, their brilliant annuals and massed perennials are not only a delight to the eyes of all, but that they afford endless hints, are as it were horticulturally educational to garden-loving visitors, may be gathered from the frequency with which such visitors are seen to consult the name-labels of the various plants.