The knot should occupy a piece of ground from twenty-five to one hundred feet square. According to "The Gardener's Labyrinth" "the flower-bed should be kept to the size that the weeder's hands may well reach into the middest of the bed." The size given in this manual is twelve feet by six, "each bed raised one foot above the ground (two feet in marshy ground) and the edge cased in with short planks framed into square posts with finials at the angles with intermediate supports." A prettier method, however, is to border the flower-bed with an edging of box, thrift, pansies, or pinks. This border outlines the shape of the knot. Within the edging, or border, "the flowers are all planted in some proportion as near one into another as it is fit for them, which will give such grace to the garden that the place will seem like a tapestry of flowers."

It would seem from the hundreds of designs for knots in the old garden-books that every possible combination of scroll and line and curve had been exhausted; but ingenious persons liked to invent their own. Markham tells us that "the pattern of the design cannot be decided by rule; the one whereof is led by the hops and skips, turnings and windings of his brain; the other, by the pleasing of his eye, according to his best fantasie."

Lawson gives the following nine designs for knots:

• Cinkfoyle
• Flower-de-luce[95]
• Trefoyle
• Frette
• Lozenges
• Cross-bow
• Diamond
• Oval
• Maze.

Here the maze is not intended as a labyrinth to walk in, but is a design for the planting of flowers.

Markham's knots are:

• Straight line knots
• Diamond knots, single and double
• Single knots
• Mixed knots
• Single impleate of straight line
• Plain and mixed
• Direct and Circular.

Knots, formed with "a border of box, lavender, or rosemary, are eighteen inches broad at bottom and clipped so close a level at the top as to form a table for the housewife to spread clothes to dry on," are Lawson's idea.

The old garden books contain many designs for knots, some of which are astonishingly intricate. Examples occur in Markham's and Lawson's books and in Didymus Mountain's "Gardener's Labyrinth" (editions of 1557, 1594, and 1608), which are perfectly practical for use to-day.

In David Loggan's "Oxonia Illustrata" (Oxford, 1675, folio) several large plates show formal gardens. Among them New College Gardens and those of Jesus are extremely interesting. Loggan's companion book on Cambridge, "Cantabrigia Illustrata" (Cambridge, 1688), has splendid views of architecture and formal gardens with knots.

Typical flower-beds are also represented in Vredeman de Vries's "Hortorum Viridariorumque" (Antwerp, 1583) and Crispin de Passe's "Hortus Floridus" (Arnhem, 1614).

Theobald's as late as 1650 preserved the Tudor arrangement.

"In the great garden are nine large complete squares, or knots, lying upon a level in the middle of the said garden, whereof one is set forth with box-borders in the likeness of the King's Arms, one other plot is planted with choice flowers; the other seven knots are all grass-knots, handsomely turfed in the intervals, or little walks. A quickset hedge of white thorn, or privet, cut into a handsome fashion at every angle, a fair cherry tree and a cypress in the middle of the knots—also a marble fountain."