Resumen de Joseph Spence's Garden in Byfleet: Some new descriptions
Soon after Joseph Spence and Alexander Pope became acquainted in 1726 through the former's Essay on Pope's Odyssey (published in June of that year), the two found they shared an interest in gardening. In the first letter of a manuscript titled, "Heads for Garden Letters", Spence wrote of "being so often, & so much of the time in his Garden with... Mr. Pope in the last sixteen years of his life". While Spence surely must have brought to this friendship some ideas of his own about gardening, we know at least, then, that from 1728 he apparently visited Pope's Twickenham garden regularly, listened closely to the poet's ideas about garden design, and was influenced by them. His illuminating anecdotes based on conversations with Pope and, later, with other amateur gardeners confirm his debt to Twickenham, though it is clear from the later anecdotes that his landscaping eventually went beyond Pope's, chiefly through more deliberate use of rural landscape and distant prospects.
