This has been an interesting week. A garden club requested my knot garden talk. This is one of my favorite talks that sadly, rarely gets requested. We do a quick romp through medieval English history and gardens.

I have always had problem with the term ‘open’ and ‘closed’ knots. There are several definitions that I have heard over the years, but non were verifiable. So I went to the most respected source I know – Robin Whalley, who wrote a terrific book on Knot Gardens. Turns out the he doesn’t mention the terms in his book because he has not had a source that actually defines the phrase. My earliest reference (Alice Morse Earle, 1901) quotes Parkinson; Whalley had Crisp (1925) who wanders around the subject a little and defines the terms using Markham without actually giving the part that Markham actually says ‘a closed knot is…’.  This had let Whalley to wonder if Crisp had invented the term. Clearly that is not so, so the learned gentleman is heading back to the books of Markham and Parkinson to see who says what when.