Category:Gardens

The history of British garden design after 1500 and before 1650 is covered by Roy Strong in The Renaissance Garden in England . It is a history of the stages by which the hortus conclusus of the middle ages evolved into a British version of the Italian Renaissance garden. The accession of Henry VIII in 1509 marks the point at which gardens became a symbol of the power and prestige of the court. For two centuries after this date the kings and queens of England were leaders of taste in garden design and used their gardens, and those of their nobles, as the settings for parties, masques and other courtly festivities of the type which took place in Italian gardens. To begin with knowledge of Italian gardens arrived via France, but by 1600 travellers were returning from Italy with personal knowledge of their wonders.

According to several account extracts in the years 1624 – 1627, Drebbel has been active with garden design and waterworks at New Hall.
Drebbel's work was probably in the manner of things established a few years before by foreign engineers imported to design gardens and waterworks. These were men such as Salomon de Caus and Constantine de Servi who were employed at the shortlived court of Henry, Prince of Wales, and de Caus' brother Isaac who, in the early 1620s, was working on a grotto beneath the Whitehall Banqueting House and at Woburn.

It raises the question about eventual contacts between Cornelis Drebbel and the De Caus brothers. Did they meet in England or even before, in Heidelberg, which lays on Drebbel's possible route from Prague back to the UK? (cfr. Dr. James Bradburne: " Tellingly De Caus, who would have known and possibly worked with Drebbel in 1610 when they were both in the employ of Henry Prince of Wales16 (and possibly earlier) remarks ..."