M KNOTS, PARTERRES, GRASS-WORK 127 



the garden enough to have it laid out in one 

 way more than another, and that they and 

 many generations since have taken pleasure in 

 its beauty and the fancy of its parterres. 

 Perhaps, when any tradition of art is formed 

 among us again, there will return this pleasure 

 and delight in those old ways which are the 

 better. 



In the sixteenth century the flower-beds 

 were commonly square. The author of The 

 Gardener s Labyrinth advises that they should 

 be kept to such a size as that " the weeder's 

 handes may well reach into the middest of the 

 bed " ; 12 feet by 6 is given as the size. Each 

 bed was to be raised about i foot above the 

 ground, but 2 feet in marshy ground. The 

 edges were to be cased in with stout planks 

 framed into square posts with finials at the 

 angles, with intermediate supports. Rea, in his 

 Flora^ a hundred years later, advises beds and 

 the various parts of the frets for flowers to be 

 formed with planks in much the same way, but 

 the plank side was only to be 4 inches high. 

 Beds raised in this way about 1 8 inches above the 

 adjacent paths, and bordered with box-edgings, 

 can still be seen in the gardens at Versailles. 

 Besides the square flower-beds, a more intricate 

 form of bed, designed to fill up a square plot, 

 was much in use. This latter was called a 

 " knot." In the sixteenth century it seems to 

 have been usually formed with rosemary, hyssop. 



