St. James's Park is still skirted by garden walls- Stafford, Clarence, and Marlborough Houses, as well as St. James's Palace, though their gardens are hardly as elaborate as those of former years. The garden of that Palace delighted the Sieur de la Serre, who accompanied Marie de Medicis when she came to pay a visit to Henrietta Maria and Charles I. and was lodged in St. James's Palace. After describing the house, "there were, besides," he writes, "two grand gardens with parterres of different figures, bordered on every side by a hedge of box, carefully cultivated by the hands of a skilful gardener; and in order to render the walks on both sides which enclosed it appear more agreeable, all sorts of fine flowers were sowed.... The other garden, which was adjoining and of the same extent, had divers walks, some sanded and others grass, but both bordered on each side by an infinity of fruit-trees, which rendered walking so agreeable that one could never be tired."
