Shakespeare makes mention of garden knots in his Richard the Second, where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
There is an allusion to garden knots in Holinshed's Chronicle. In 1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and chipping of knottis and sweeping the said garden clean."
[[009]] Ovid, in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe, tells us that the black Mulberry was originally white. The two lovers killed themselves under a white Mulberry tree and the blood penetrating to the roots of the tree mixed with the sap and gave its color to the fruit.
[[010]] Revived Adonis,--for, according to tradition he died every year and revived again. Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,--that is, of Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. Or that, not mystic--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON
"Divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry," observes Horace Walpole, "the garden of Alcinous was a small orchard and vineyard with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within a quickset hedge." Lord Kames, says, still more boldly, that it was nothing but a kitchen garden. Certainly, gardening amongst the ancient Greeks, was a very simple business. It is only within the present century that it has been any where elevated into a fine art.
[[011]] "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or only pass it over with [the Hebrew word for] Eden, though the Greek be of a later name. In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient gardens do equal those of late times, or those at present in Europe. Of the gardens of Hesperides, we know nothing singular, but some golden apples. Of Alcinous his garden, we read nothing beyond figs, apples, olives; if we allow it to be any more than a fiction of Homer, unhappily placed in Corfu, where the sterility of the soil makes men believe there was no such thing at all. The gardens of Adonis were so empty that they afforded proverbial expression, and the principal part thereof was empty spaces, with herbs and flowers in pots. I think we little understand the pensile gardens of Semiramis, which made one of the wonders of it [Babylon], wherein probably the structure exceeded the plants contained in them. The excellency thereof was probably in the trees, and if the descension of the roots be equal to the height of trees, it was not [absurd] of Strebæus to think the pillars were hollow that the roots might shoot into them."--Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page 498.
[[012]] The house and garden before Pope died were large enough for their owner. He was more than satisfied with them. "As Pope advanced in years," says Roscoe, "his love of gardening, and his attention to the various occupations to which it leads, seem to have increased also. This predilection was not confined to the ornamental part of this delightful pursuit, in which he has given undoubted proofs of his proficiency, but extended to the useful as well as the agreeable, as appears from several passages in his poems; but he has entered more particularly into this subject in a letter to Swift (March 25, 1736); "I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you: for I am rich, that is, have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants. I have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty housewife is dead! The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone! Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, Agricultura proxima sapientiae. For God's sake, why should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me? And let tales anima concordes be our motto and our epitaph."
[[013]] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below. Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external nature.
[[014]] See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum.