48 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



monly regarded as bordered "beds," which our fancy 

 associates with old-time gardens, were always filled 

 with flowers. This is not true. Some may have 

 been, but the great gardeners and writers upon garden- 

 ing of the age, are careful to express their condemna- 

 tion of such treatment. Flowers were put into bor- 

 ders along the walks and against the hedge, or into 

 what they called "open knots." These were of fanci- 

 ful form similar to the bordered knots, perhaps just 

 like them; but were without inclosure of any kind 

 open, and therefore better suited to flowers; what we 

 to-day would call a bed. Boxwood borders, or bor- 

 ders of thyme or rosemary or hyssop or thrift all 

 these were used in planting the intricate bordered 

 knots and designs left no room with their convolu- 

 tions and often very narrow complexities, for flowers. 

 And moreover, such designs needed no flowers; they 

 were expressions of form and line alone; flowers fur- 

 nished quite another motif, to be used in another 

 place. 



Boxwood was highest in favor for a border to the 

 simplest knots that is, those whose design was not 

 too intricate for its sturdiness. "French or Dutch 

 box" Parkinson calls it, recommending it because it 

 does not overgrow the beds and spoil their form, "as 

 thrift, germander, marjerome, Savorie," do. Laven- 

 *der cotton was used also; and here again Josselyn's 



