ii4 Old Time Gardens 



nuals; any garden planting that is not "bedding- 

 out" is wildly named "an herbaceous border." 



Herb gardens were no vanity and no luxury in 

 our grandmothers' day ; they were a necessity. To 

 them every good housewife turned for nearly all 

 that gave variety to her cooking, and to fill her 

 domestic pharmacopoeia. The physician placed his 

 chief reliance for supplies on herb gardens and the 

 simples of the fields. An old author says, " Many 

 an old wife or country woman doth often more 

 good with a few known and common garden herbs, 

 than our bombast physicians, with all their pro- 

 digious, sumptuous, far-fetched, rare, conjectural 

 medicines." Doctor and goodwife both had a rival 

 in the parson. The picture of the country parson 

 and his wife given by old George Herbert was 

 equally true of the New England minister and his 

 wife : 



" In the knowledge of simples one thing would be care- 

 fully observed, which is to know what herbs may be used 

 instead of drugs of the same nature, and to make the garden 

 the shop ; for home-bred medicines are both more easy for 

 the parson's purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. 

 So when the apothecary useth either for loosing Rhubarb, 

 or for binding Bolearmana, the parson useth damask or 

 white Rose for the one, and Plantain, Shepherd's Purse, and 

 Knot-grass for the other; and that with better success. 

 As for spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things 

 before them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts 

 them out of his family, esteeming that there is no spice 

 comparable for herbs to Rosemary, Thyme, savory Mints, 

 and for seeds to Fennel and Caraway. Accordingly, for 



