Last, but by no means least, either in size or importance, the gardens of Buckingham Palace must be glanced at. The Palace is so modern, when compared with the older Royal residences, that it is easy to forget the history of the forty acres enclosed in the King's private garden, yet they have much historical interest. In the time of James I. a portion of the ground was covered by a mulberry garden, which the King had planted, in pursuance of his scheme to encourage the culture of silkworms, in 1609. That year he spent �935 in levelling the four acres of ground and building a wall round it for the protection of the trees. A few years later most of the enclosure became a tea-garden, while part was occupied by Goring House. There are many references to these famous tea-gardens, called the "Mulberry Garden," in plays and writings of the seventeenth century. Evelyn notes in his "Diary," on 10th April 1654: "My Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceeding cheated at, Cromwell and his partisans having shut up and seized Spring Garden, which till now had been the usual rendezvous for the ladies and gallants at this season."
Goring House stood just where Buckingham Palace does now, and was the residence of George Goring, Earl of Norwich, and of his son, with whom the title became extinct. It was let in 1666, by the last Earl of Norwich, to Lord Arlington, and became known sometimes as Arlington House. It was burnt in 1674, and Evelyn notes in his "Diary" of 21st September: "I went to see the great losse that Lord Arlington had sustained by fire at Goring House, this night consumed to the ground, with exceeding losse of hangings, plate, rare pictures, and cabinets; hardly anything was saved of the best and most princely furniture that any subject had in England. My lord and lady were both absent at the Bath." Buckingham House, which was built in 1703 on the same site for the Duke of Buckingham, must have been very charming. Defoe describes it as "one of the beauties of London, both by reason of its situation and its building.... Behind it is a fine garden, a noble terrace (from whence, as well as from the apartments, you have a most delicious prospect), and a little park with a pretty canal." The Duke of Buckingham himself gives a full description of his garden in a letter to a friend, telling him how he passed his time and what were his enjoyments, when he resigned being Privy Seal to Queen Anne (1709). "To the garden," he writes, "we go down from the house by seven steps into a gravel walk that reaches across the garden, with a covered arbour at each end. Another of thirty feet broad leads from the front of the house, and lies between two groves of tall lime trees, planted on a carpet of grass. The outsides of those groves are bordered with tubs of bays and orange trees. At the end of the broad walk you go up to a terrace 400 paces long, with a large semicircle in the middle, from where are beheld the Queen's (Anne's) two parks and a great part of Surrey: then, going down a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal 600 yards long and 17 broad, with two rows of limes on either side. On one side of this terrace a wall, covered with roses and jessamines, is made low to admit the view of a meadow full of cattle just beneath (no disagreeable object in the midst of a great city), and at each end is a descent into parterres with fountains and waterworks. From the biggest of these parterres we pass into a little square garden, that has a fountain in the middle and two green-houses on the sides... below this a kitchen-garden... and under the windows... of this greenhouse is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales." This is truly an entrancing picture of a town garden.
