In 1664 Evelyn published his Kalendarium Hortense, or Gardener's Almanac, a most popular work, which went through a number of editions, and appeared with the last corrected edition of the Silva, in 1705, and Evelyn died at the end of the same year. The flowers to be planted and the business to be done in each month is carefully gone through. He gives also a list of the comparative tenderness of flowers, and divides them into three classes, those " least patient of cold," "to be first set into the conservatory or otherwise defended," those " enduring second degree of cold," and accordingly "to be secured in the conservatory," class III. "not perishing but in excessive colds to be last set in or protected under matrasses or slighter coverings." His classifications of some of the plants are rather singular. The first begins well with Acacia Aegyptiaca (= A. vera), Aloe American (= Agave americana), then Amaranthus tricolor, but the list contains also Styrax Colutea, or bladder senna, and white lilac, which are hardy, while oranges, lemons, oleanders and "Spanish jasmine" (F. odoratissimum) are in the second class with the " Suza Iris" (I. susiana), "summer purple cyclamen" (C. europoeum), and " Digitalis Hispan " (lutea). The last list classes together, pomegranate and pine-apples with Eryngium planum and winter aconite.

In Rea's Flora, Ceres and Pomona, the approximate size of a garden is given. The dimensions are much more modest than Bacon's " princely -garden," eighty square yards for fruit, and thirty square yards for flower-garden for a nobleman, for a " private gentleman 40 square yards fruit and 20 flower, is enough ; a wall all round of brick 9 feet high, and a 5 feet wall to divide the fruit and flower gardens, or else pales painted a brick colour. The large square beds to be railed with wooden rails painted, or box-trees or pallisades for dwarf trees." Most of the designs he gives are squares, with T or L shaped beds, fitting into the angles and along the walls of the garden, these borders to be about three yards wide. In the corners of each bed were to be planted " the best crown Imperials, lilies Martagons and such tall flowers, in the middle of the square beds great tufts of pionies, and round about them several sorts of cyclamen, the rest (of the beds) with Daffodils, Hyacinths, and such like. The streight beds are fit for the best Tulips, where account may be kept of them. Ranunculus and Anemonies also require particular beds—the rest may be set all over with the more ordinary sorts of Tulips, Frittilarias, bulbed Iris and all other kinds of good roots. ... It will be requisite to have in the middle of one side of the flower garden a handsom octangular somer-house roofed everyway and finely painted with Landskips and other conceits furnished with seats about and a table in the middle which serveth not only for delight and entertainment but for many other necessary purposes as to put the roots of Tulips and other flowers in, as they are taken up upon papers, with the names upon them untill they be dried, that they may be wrapped up and put in boxes. You must yearly make your hot bed for raising of choice annuals, for the raising of new varieties of divers kinds. These gardens will not be maintained and kept well furnished without a Nurcery, as well of stocks for fruits as of flowers and seedlings where many pretty conclusions may be practised".

Rea's description shows what great attention was paid to the culture of bulbs, especially tulips, in the average small garden. " Tulip fever " was at its height, and although it never reached such a climax in England as it did in Holland, the flowers were justly popular. Fifty years after the first tulip was seen in Augsburg (1559) the flower was well known and largely cultivated throughout Germany, Holland and England. About seven distinct varieties were grown, and endless variations propagated from them, and the rage for procuring fresh colours became a passion among gardeners. Rea's son-in-law, Samuel Gilbert, in his Florist's vade mecum,* gives a plan of a garden for tulips. The beds are divided into squares, and numbered up to fifty, and each division was intended for a distinct variety of tulip.

A present of tulips was much valued, or an exchange was effected among friends, and each new variety carefully treasured. The following notes occur in a pocket-book of Sir Thomas Hanmer: "Tulips sent to Sir J. Trevor 1654 1 Peruchot 1 Admiral Enchuysen 1 of my Angelicas 1 Comisetta 1 Omen 1 of my best Dianas, all very good bearing rootes, sent by my wife from Haulton." " June 1655 Lord Lambert, I sent him by Rose a very great mother-root of Agate Hanmer." This was a tulip grown in his own garden at Bettisfield, its colours were gris de lin, crimson and white. Sir Thomas Hanmer has also left notes on their culture. " Set them in the ground about the full moon in September about four inches asunder and under four inches deep, set the early ones where the sun in the spring may come hot on them. Set the later kinds where the noon sun may not be too fierce on them. Let the earth be mold taken from the fields, or where wood-stacks have been, and mix it with a fourth part or more of sand. Make your beds at least half a yard thick of this mold. Tulips live best planted alone, but you may put some anemonies with them on the outside the beds if they be raised high and round. They will come up in December and January, and the early sorts flower in the latter end of March, and beginning of April, the other a fortnight or more after them. Set the mother-roots by themselves, and the young offsets by themselves. The new varieties of tulips come from sowing their seeds, but the seedlings will be five years at least before they bear a flower. Keep old strong roots for seed, of such kinds as have blue cup and purple chives, and are striped with pure white, and carnations or gridelines or murreys. The single colours with blue cups or bottoms, and purple chives will most of them parrach or stripe and will stand two years unremoved when the roots are old".

* Second Edition, 1687,.