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.
[95] Fleur-de-lis.
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.