Evelyn, John (1620–1706). English scholar, diarist, intellectual, gardener, and founder member of The Royal Society. In his Fumifugium; or the inconveniencies of the aer and smoak of London dissipated, together with some remedies …(1661) he proposed expelling noxious trades from the City. of London, forming new extra-mural cemeteries, and designing new urban squares, planted with trees and sweet-smelling flowers. His Sylva (1664), a treatise on arboriculture, was probably intended as part of an ambitious encyclopaedia of gardening, and in the same year he published A Parallel of Ancient Architecture with the Modern (a translation of Fréart de Chambray's Parallèle) in which he argued for the establishment of schools for the teaching of architecture: it also included a glossary of terms. In 1658 and 1698 he published translations of French works on gardening and garden design, and wrote a vast work on gardens and gardening, ‘Elysium Britannicum’, which he never published. Having judiciously removed himself from England during the Civil War, he travelled on the Continent in 1643–7 and again in 1649–52, where he absorbed much information. On his return to England he settled at Sayes Court, Deptford (then in Kent), where he landscaped the grounds, and also designed the gardens of his brother's house at Wotton House, Surrey. From 1677 he laid out the gardens of Albury Park, Surrey. He was involved at Cornbury House, Oxon. (1664 and again in the 1680s), and Euston Hall, Suffolk (1671), where he employed straight avenues (a term he promoted). Virtually nothing of these works survives. In 1666 he advised Wren on the scheme to rebuild St Paul's Cathedral, and prepared a plan for a new City of London after the fire which included using the rubble to extend the City into the Thames, straighten the shoreline, and create grand buildings along the river-front. Unfortunately, his proposals fell on deaf ears.

Bibliography

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
O'Malley & Wischke (eds.) (1997);
Jane Turner (1996)