But we have not always maintained that high level of
gardening taste which was ours before the eighteenth century and which today is ours again. There have been six main phases, or fashions, in English gardening, and the new vogue for flowering shrubs may mark the seventh. There was the old English tradition, which may well have come to us from Roman days, and which survived until the time of Charles II. Then arrived the French fashion of Le Notre, and with it the craze for architectural as opposed to horti- cultural design. The Dutch manner followed in the school of Vredeman de Vries, to be replaced in its turn by our landscape gardeners and the devastations of Kent, Brown and Humphrey Repton. The Victorian phase ensued with pampas and laurel, and thereafter the admirable natural gardening taught us by William Robinson, Miss Jekyll and Vicary Gibbs. The vogue of the flower- ing tree and shrub may well mark a seventh and most welcome stage. * *
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