ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an explanation of how Stephen Switzer, and his colleagues and contemporaries first made what he had called Ichnographia Rustica, or more familiarly Modern Gardening from the mid-1740s, land later landscape gardens. In the mid-1720s Stephen Switzer's patterns of life and of practice changed. He needed to be in the capital, and preferably in Westminster. St Margaret's Westminster became his home church, and in the early years he had a house and garden in Kennington Lane, just across the Thames, then largely occupied by market gardens. There are two sources which help to identify Switzer's public and give an often surprising insight into who shared his interests in improvement. Repeated experiment based on secure knowledge is the key to success. Such advice is repeated throughout the Select Transactions and applied to many and varied situations. Switzer, as an authority quoted by Robert Maxwell and as a member of the society, agreed with these principles.
