It has been said that there is no street in London in which one cannot find a church and a tree. It is indeed remarkable to observe the large number of trees still existing and flourishing in the City of London, especially since the City churchyards have been converted into gardens. Of the old private gardens there are now left but few: one in St. Helen’s Place; one behind the Rectory of St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe; the Drapers’ Gardens, much curtailed; and the churchyards above mentioned, which have been converted into gardens. In the sixteenth century, however, London was still full of gardens, in the north part of the City much more than in the south. Every house had its garden behind; for the most part narrow, yet carefully cultivated and full of trees and flowers. If you take the part of London that has been least meddled with, the north-west corner of the City, for instance—that part bounded by London Wall on the North; by Monkwell and Noble Streets on the West; by Gresham Street on the South; and by Moorgate on the East—you will find that the blocks between the older streets are intersected everywhere by courts, alleys, narrow lanes and buildings. These were all, including the ancient churches, taken out of the gardens. Formerly, for instance, between Basinghall Street and Coleman Street there were very long gardens behind the houses; these have been used for lanes of connection, and for workmen’s houses, such as Lilypot Lane and Oat Lane. Hidden away behind the houses is Sadler’s Hall; here also, hidden away behind houses, is Haberdashers’ Hall; here were the courtyards of inns, which formed among the gardens convenient ground for their great open courts and their stables. In this way the gardens of London gradually disappeared. In the sixteenth century, however, there were a great many still left: London presented an appearance of greenery and waving branches wherever one turned off the main roads. The chief authority on the gardens of the time is Harrison, who tells us what herbs, fruits, and roots were then grown, as well as the medicinal plants then so much cultivated. Harrison[6] says, speaking of the flower gardens:— “If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses, how wonderfullie is their beauty increased, not onelie with floures which Colmella calleth _Terrena sydera_, saying, ‘Pingit et in varios terrestria sydera flores,’ and varietie of curious and costlie workmanship, but also with rare and medicinable hearbes sought up in the land within these fortie yeares; so that in comparison of this present, the ancient gardens were but dunghills and laistowes to such as did possess them.