Some English Gardens

"The English gardens in which Mr. Elgood delights to paint are for the most part those that have come to us through the influence of the Italian Renaissance; those that in common speech we call gardens of formal design. The remote forefathers of these gardens of Italy, now so well known to travellers, were the old pleasure-grounds of Rome and the neighbouring districts, built and planted some sixteen hundred years ago. Though many relics of domestic architecture remain to remind us that Britain was once a Roman colony, and though it is reasonable to suppose that the conquerors brought their ways of gardening with them as well as their ways of building, yet nothing remains in England of any Roman gardening of any importance, and we may well conclude that our gardens of formal design came to us from Italy, inspired by those of the Renaissance, though often modified by French influence...." -- Gertrude Jekyll