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 garderiers 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 fan'ci- 

 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 hi^est 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 



