With unsurpassed eloquence Sir Francis Bacon captures the significance of gardening for the human spirit and proclaims its challenge to artistic creativity. Yet as a garden designer Francis Bacon is an enigmatic figure. The problem arises because the ideal garden which he described in his essay Of Gardens (1625) owes nothing to the garden he created at Gorhambury. As Sir Roy Strong has remarked: ‘his detailed specification for a royal garden is oddly surprising after his own at Gorhambury’. The latter, planned in 1608, was a water-garden which, as will be shown, comprised a series of streams, palisaded ponds and islands which provided a setting for flowers, statues, a rock, a grotto, an arbour and a banqueting house. It has been suggested that he drew inspiration from the water parterres created for Henry IV at Fontainebleau, Gaillon and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, even perhaps from Salomon De Caus, whose work at Richmond and Hatfield may well have coincided with that of Francis at Gorhambury.