Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events   1698 On this day, the English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier, and diarist, John Evelyn, went to Deptford to "see how miserably the Czar... left my house after three months [of] making it his Court." Keep in mind John's appreciation for the amount of work a garden requires as I tell you this little story about him. In 1698, John Evelyn had owned his estate for 40 years. Everyone who knew it said it was magnificent - both inside and out. It was decorated to the nines. Of all he had accomplished, John's garden was his pride and joy. That year, the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, brought an entourage of 200 people to England to visit William III. In a gesture of hospitality, William volunteered John Evelyn's home to host the Czar and his people during their visit. John and his wife graciously moved out to give the Czar his privacy. But it wasn't long before John's servants began sending urgent messages begging him to return. And when John returned home, he walked into a nightmare. The whole estate had been trashed. Priceless paintings had served as dartboards. His floors were ruined, windows were smashed; even the garden was destroyed. The servants told how the 6'8 Czar had played a game with his friends where they put him in one of John's wheelbarrows and then raced him through the garden beds, crashing into walls, trees, and hedges. It must have been a scene akin to the movie Animal House. Clearly, the Czar had shown a complete disregard for the sanctity of John's garden. As gardeners, we can imagine how John must have felt. For twenty years, John had nursed along a hedge of holly that had turned into a glorious living wall. John, who was an expert on trees, was particularly proud of that hedge, and he wrote, Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable hedge of about 480 feet length, 9 feet high, and 5 feet in diameter Sadly the hedge was also ruined by the Czar. And even the hardscapes were no match for the Czar's party, and part of a stone wall surrounding the garden was toppled over. John immediately sent word to the king about what had happened, and arrangements were made straight away to move the Czar to other lodgings. King William made arrangements to have the Evelyn home fully restored - the house needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the floors up. John Evelyn was 78 years old when this happened to him. I'm sure there was no amount of restitution that could restore the years of love he had spent in his garden. He lived for another eight years before dying in 1706. Today John is remembered for his detailed diary that he kept for 66 years. As a passionate gardener, many of his entries pertain to plants, landscaping, and related garden topics. John believed that gardening was a year-long endeavor and that the experience of gardening provided immeasurable benefits. John wrote, The gardener’s work is never at an end, it begins with the year and continues to the next.  Gardening is a labor full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and [aids the] most serious contemplation, experience, health, and longevity.   1714 Death of Sophia of Hanover, the Electress of Hanover. She died at 83. Sophia was next in line to become the Queen of England, but she never got the chance. She was strolling through her magnificent garden in Hanover, Germany, when she was caught in a rainstorm, and after she rushed to find shelter, she collapsed and died of heart failure. Today a sculpture memorial of Electress Sophia stands on the southern edge of the garden. In 1714, after Sophia died on June 8th, her cousin, Queen Anne, died just two months later at the beginning of August. And that is how Sophia's eldest son was able to claim the British throne as George I. Today, both Sophia and