Old Time Gardens 
1 14 
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 : — 
u 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 
