Knot in our neighborhood

"...our sea-walled garden, the whole land
Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruin'd,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?"

                                                                Richard II     (III, iv)

Agecroft Hall's Knot Garden is pictured above; it is one of several gardens at Agecroft based on English designs that were highly regarded among the courtly set in Shakespeare's age. And clearly, few things were more demanding of near-constant attention than this sort of elaborate, meticulously planned garden. The essence of the Elizabethan attitude toward nature seemed to revolve around the idea that with conscientious effort, the natural world could be made even more beautiful than it already was. The one caveat: without such human intervention, nature could quickly turn ugly, and often did.

Little wonder that in Shakespeare's Richard II, he has a servant despairing over national affairs run amok, like a garden with its "knots disordered." The king is about to take a fall, and this worried servant doesn't have to look far to find natural portents of disaster in the very garden that surrounds him.

One of Shakespeare's most distinguished contemporaries, Sir Francis Bacon, included among his expansive essays a number of observations about gardens and gardening:

     "God Almighty first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.
       It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces
      are but gross handyworks, and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and
      elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were
      the greater perfection."

Bacon went on to express his belief that the best gardens were planted so as to reserve some beauty for all months of the year: the drabness of the winter months would be relieved by a number of evergreens; the hottest months would not be overlooked either.  

"In July come gillyflowers of all varieties, musk roses, the lime tree in blossom, early pears and plums in fruit....In August come plums...pears, apricots, berberries, filberds, musk melons..." 

Bacon included recommendations for every other month as well. It's difficult to avoid the impression that a green thumb must have pushed his pen across the page.


Agecroft Hall's two open knot designs shown above are fairly typical of the Tudor English style. Germander, English lavender, and green santolina are among the herbs that have been used over the years to create the elaborate patterns. The aromatic qualities of the herbs were usually given due consideration: Shakespeare's world included plenty of smells that were less than pleasant, and part of the allure of a garden was the chance to escape from all that. In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, quite a few estates of the landed gentry included such gardens, some fairly modest and others large, exceedingly intricate, and designed to impress.

The four beds bordering the knots are usually planted with seasonal vegetables that would not have been uncommon in Shakespeare's England, thus combining beauty with a bit of utilitarianism that is understandable in any age. The English were nothing if not practical.