John nodded, glanced once more at the sunlit beauty of his garden and then turned to his house.

Summer 1657

In early summer John took the wagon and cart over to Wimbledon House with a delivery of bulbs and saplings for John Lambert. He found Lord Lambert in his rare garden – a walled area facing south and west reserved for exotic plants – with an easel before him, paints on a table beside him and an exquisite white tulip in a porcelain blue bowl. In the centre of the garden was a newly planted acacia tree which took John’s eye at once.

‘Is that one of mine?’ John asked.

‘No,’ Lambert said. ‘I had it from Paris last autumn, from the Robins’ garden.’

‘Very fine,’ John said, a hint of envy in his voice. Lambert heard it at once.

‘You shall have a cutting,’ he promised. ‘I know you have so little. I know your garden is so poor.’

John grinned ruefully. ‘A true gardener can always squeeze in one more plant. Now, I have brought you some orange plants as you asked. This one they call leopardsbane in Virginia, it flowers in autumn: a wonderful rich, bright orange with a heart as dark as chocolate. And the lily bulbs you ordered. And some whips of orange trees.’

‘I have a fancy for a garden in yellow and orange,’ Lambert explained, ‘with orange trees in tubs at the centre of the beds. And a blaze of colour all around. What d’you think? Are there enough orange flowers?’

‘Marigolds?’ John suggested. ‘Ranunculus? Sunflowers? Turkish nasturtiums? I have some tulips which would pass as orange, and some new narcissi with orange hearts. My father made a golden garden years ago at Hatfield. He used kingcups and buttercups by the watercourses, and yellow flag iris. And my Virginian trumpet vine is a bright true orange.’

‘I’ll have them all,’ Lambert declared. ‘And what lily bulbs d’you have for me? I want to plant some great pots with lily bulbs deep in the base, and tulips in the middle, and snowdrops on the top so they succeed each other from spring through to midsummer.’

John shook his head. ‘You’ll have to repot every three or four years,’ he said. ‘They won’t thrive in such a small space. They’ll sap the strength of the earth. But the first two years you could leave them and you would get one flower succeeding another, as long as you keep them damp with comfrey water.’

‘Anything else new?’ Lambert asked as they walked from the rare garden to the stable yard where John had halted the cart.

‘I brought you some day lilies and some white lilies, and there are a couple you could use in your orange garden: a red lily and a flame lily. They could pass for orange and you could breed from them, selecting the most orange colours.’

Lambert nodded to his man to unload the cart.