Varied Gardens Fair 
55 
closed paths, that opened into each other by such 
artful contrivance that it was difficult to find one’s 
way in and out through these bewildering paths. 
“ When well formed, of a man’s height, your friend 
may perhaps wander in gathering berries as he 
cannot recover himself without your help.” 
The maze was not a thing of beauty, it was 
cc nothing for sweetness and health,” to use Lord 
Bacon’s words ; it was only a whimsical notion of 
gardening amusement, pleasing to a generation who 
liked to have hidden fountains in their gardens to 
sprinkle suddenly the unwary. I doubt if any 
mazes were ever laid out in America, though I have 
heard vague references to one in Virginia. Knots 
had been the choice adornment of the Tudor 
garden. They were not wholly a thing of the past 
when we had here our first gardens, and they have 
had a distinct influence on garden laying-out till our 
own day. 
An Elizabethan poet wrote : — 
“ My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong. 
Embanked with benches to sitt and take my rest ; 
The knots so enknotted it cannot be expressed 
The arbores and alyes so pleasant and so duke.” 
These garden knots were not flower beds edged 
with Box or Rosemary, with narrow walks between 
the edgings, as were the parterres of our later 
formal gardens. They were square, ornamental 
beds, each of which had a design set in some 
close-growing, trim plant, clipped flatly across 
the top, and the design filled in with colored earth 
