Knot Gardens

Classic Knot Garden at Helmingham

A knot garden is exactly what it sounds like–a formal garden laid out to resemble a decorative knot. The concept is known to date back to Elizabethan times and may be even more ancient.  Renaissance knot gardens consisted of square compartments planted with different herbs and aromatic plants, however, as gardening developed, knot gardens took on more and more of the formal decorative elements of parterre gardens. Although today’s knot gardens are often based around boxwood parterres or other formally clipped topiary hedges, many knot gardens still have an herbal component as a reminder of Renaissance knot gardens (which were meant to have a culinary medicinal, and even magical purposes).

Traditional Elizabethan Knot Garden of Lemon Thyme and Grey Santalina

Here is a little gallery of various pretty knot gardens from around the world (although they mostly seem to be English).

A contemporary knot garden photographed by Mick Hales.

Miniature tabletop knot garden at Filoli

Tudor Knot Garden

Jacobean style Knot Garden is at the rear of the Hertford Museum, Hertfordshire

Jardins de Villandry: extravagant parterre gardens in the Loire Valley

Knot Garden at the London Garden Museum

Rosemary Verey’s Knot Garden

Margot Pattison’s Traditional Knot Garden in Winter

An English knot garden at Bill and Mary Wayne Dixon’s home

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