LAY-OUT OF STATELY GARDENS 299 



to "The Gardener's Labyrinth" "the flower-bed 

 should be kept to the size that the weeder's hands 

 may well reach into the middest of the bed." The 

 size given in this manual is twelve feet by six, "each 

 bed raised one foot above the ground (two feet in 

 marshy ground) and the edge cased in with short 

 planks framed into square posts with finials at the 

 angles with intermediate supports." A prettier 

 method, however, is to border the flower-bed with 

 an edging of box, thrift, pansies, or pinks. This 

 border outlines the shape of the knot. Within the 

 edging, or border, "the flowers are all planted in 

 some proportion as near one into another as it is fit 

 for them, which will give such grace to the garden 

 that the place will seem like a tapestry of flowers." 



It would seem from the hundreds of designs for 

 knots in the old garden-books that every possible 

 combination of scroll and line and curve had been 

 exhausted; but ingenious persons liked to invent 

 their own. Markham tells us that "the pattern of 

 the design cannot be decided by rule ; the one where- 

 of is led by the hops and skips, turnings and wind- 

 ings of his brain; the other, by the pleasing of his 

 eye, according to his best fantasie." 



Lawson gives the following nine designs for 

 knots: 



