“For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of greens to be disposed of by an eminent town gardener, who has lately applied to me upon this head. He represents, that for the advancement of a polite sort of ornament in the villas and gardens adjacent to this great city, and in order to distinguish those places from the mere barbarous countries of gross Nature, the world stands much in need of a virtuoso gardener who has a turn to sculpture, and is thereby capable of improving upon the ancients of his profession in the imagery of evergreens. My correspondent is arrived to such perfection, that he cuts family-pieces of men, women, or children. Any ladies that please may have their own effigies in myrtle, or their husband’s in horn-beam. He is a puritan wag, and never fails when he shows his garden, to repeat that passage in the Psalms, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, and thy children as olive-branches round thy table.” I shall proceed to his catalogue, as he sent it for my recommendation.
“Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm: Eve and the serpent very flourishing.”
“St George in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April.”
“A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the present. _N.B._ These two not to be sold separately.”
“A laurestine bear in blossom, with a juniper hunter in berries.”
“A pair of giants, stunted, to be sold cheap.”
“A Queen Elizabeth in phylyrea, a little inclining to the green sickness, but of full growth.”
“Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of, a pennyworth.”
“A quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather.”
“A lavender pig, with sage growing in his belly.”
“Noah’s ark in holly, standing on the mount; the ribs a little damaged for want of water.”
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CROWN AND JUG, ELVASTON CASTLE ]
Such was the crusade against Topiary; in its train came swift destruction. Bridgeman and Kent were the landscape gardeners who, influenced by the writings of their time and desirous of instituting a new order of things, brought about the great change in garden design. They not only cleared away the sculptured trees but destroyed splendid, close hedges as well, throwing open to all eyes, and to all the winds, gardens that had hitherto been delightfully enclosed and secluded. Of Bridgeman there is very little information forthcoming, but Loudon tells us “He banished verdant sculpture and introduced morsels of a forest appearance in the gardens at Richmond.” Kent was a versatile Yorkshireman, who was successively painter, architect and landscape gardener; Claremont, Esher, laid out about 1725–1735, was one of his designs. He was the friend of Lord Burlington and, even more than Bridgeman, he carried into effect the ideas of Pope. The great successor to Kent was Brown, who was head gardener at Stowe till 1750, and subsequently, after being employed by the Duke of Grafton, he was head gardener at Hampton Court and Windsor. At this time he became very much in request as a landscape gardener, and so continued well on towards the end of the eighteenth century. His sympathy with Topiary may be gathered from the remark made by Sir Wm. Chambers in 1772, that “unless the mania were not checked, in a few years longer there would not be found three trees in a line from Land’s End to the Tweed.” In the course of about fifty years, from 1740 to 1790, the gardens of England, with a few exceptions, were completely altered, and the style that had been in vogue for full one hundred and fifty years was almost wholly obliterated. Later designers added many improvements, and a more graceful style succeeded that of Kent and Brown, but Topiary as a part of garden design was practically non-existent for about a hundred years. Then commenced the modern revival of the Art.