lly, and to look at them chiefly as an
assemblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming
masses to separate one from another; all produce so much the same sort
of impression. The consequence is people see the flowers on the beds
without caring to know anything about them or even to ask their names.
It was different in the older gardens, because there was just variety
there; the plants strongly contrasted with each other, and we were ever
passing from the beautiful to the curious. Now we get little of
quaintness or mystery, or of the strange delicious thought of being lost
or embosomed in a tall rich wood of flowers. All is clear, definite, and
classical, the work of a too narrow and exclusive taste."--FORBES
WATSON. The old "knot-work" was not open to this censure, though no
doubt it led the way which ended in "bedding-out." The beginning of the
system crept in very shortly after Shakespeare's time. Parkinson spoke
of an arrangement of spring flowers which, when "all planted in some
proportion as near one unto another as is fit for them will give such a
grace to the garden that the place will seem like a piece of tapestry of
many glorious colours, to encrease every one's delight." And again--"The
Tulipas may be so matched, one colour answering and setting off another,
that the place where they stand may resemble a piece of curious
needlework or piece of painting." But these plants were all perennial,
and remained where they were once planted, and with this one exception
named by Parkinson, the planting of knot-work was as different as
possible from the modern planting of carpet-beds. The beds were planted
inside their thick margins with a great variety of plants, and
apparently set as thick as possible, like Harrison's garden quoted
above, with its 300 separate plants in as many square feet. These were
nearly all hardy perennials,[347:1] with the addition of a few hardy
annuals, and the great object seems to have been to have had something
of interest or beauty in these gardens at all times of the year. The
principle of the old gardeners was that "Nature abhors a vacuum," and,
as far as their gardens went, they did their best to prevent a vacuum
occurring at any time. In this way I think they surpassed us in their
practical gardening, for, even if they did not always succeed, it was
surely something for them to aim (in Lord Bacon's happy words), "to have
_ver perpetuum_ as the place affords."

Where the