This section is from the book "A History Of Gardening In England", by Alicia Amherst. Also available from Amazon: A History Of Gardening In England.
The garden at Theobalds is also described by Hentzner in 1591 :—" In the gallery was painted the genealogy of the kings of England; from this place one goes into the garden, encompassed with water, large enough for one to have the pleasure of going in a boat, and rowing between the shrubs; here are a great variety of trees and plants, labyrinths made with a great deal of labour, a jet d'eau with its bason of white marble, and columns and pyramids of wood and other materials up and down the garden. After seeing these, we were led by the gardener into the summer-house, in the lower part of which, built semi-circularly, are the twelve Roman Emperors in white marble and a table of truck-stone ; the upper part of it is set round with cisterns of lead into which the water is conveyed through pipes, so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer-time they are very convenient for bathing. In another room for entertainment very near this and joined to it by a little bridge was a noble table of red marble".
* From family MSS. belonging to the Marquess of Salisbury.
Having now completed the survey of the several features of an Elizabethan garden, terraces, walks, alleys, mazes, mounts, arbours, fountains and streams having been looked at one by one ; it only remains to take a glance at it as a whole. The two following descriptions of a garden take in all these details, and are both contemporary, although from two very different sources. One is the description of a stage arranged to represent a beautiful garden, on the occasion of the performance of a " Maske of Flowers," by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, at Whitehall, upon Twelfth Night, 1613, " being last of the solemnities and magnificences which were performed at the marriage of the Earl of Somerset and Lady Francis, daughter of the Earle of Suffolke, Lord Chamberlaine; " * the other is from Spenser's Faerie Queene, the lines in which he pictures a perfect garden, a " second Paradise".
 
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