John Evelyn's garden at Sayes Court was one of the most celebrated in 17th century England, laid out by a writer and diarist who helped define English ideas about forestry and planting, and it lasted less than four decades before a tenant wrecked it for sport. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia rented the house in 1698 while studying shipbuilding nearby, and legend holds that he spent his evenings being wheeled through Evelyn's prized holly hedges in a wheelbarrow, flattening years of careful topiary for entertainment. Historians doubt Peter planted anything here himself, and this mulberry's own age is uncertain enough that the honest claim is only that it may have survived the same visit that ruined everything around it, not that it predates the destruction with certainty. What remains today is a fenced, propped tree standing in an unremarkable public park where almost nothing else of Evelyn's garden survives, plus a stone marker at its base that tells visitors the wheelbarrow story rather than leaving them to wonder why one old mulberry gets special treatment. It still fruits every August, one of the few parts of Sayes Court's story that still repeats on schedule rather than existing only in an old diary.
In fruit
August, when the fruit ripens, one of the few parts of Sayes Court's story that still repeats every year
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sayes Court Park, Sayes Court Street, Deptford, London SE8 5RAYou can recognise it by the fence around it and the stone marker at its base telling the wheelbarrow story about Peter the Great. It stands propped in Sayes Court Park in Deptford, where nothing else of the garden survives.
Free, public park
Deptford or Deptford Bridge station, 5 min walk
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
