Why Knot Plant a Knot Garden?

 With my new book MUMMIES EXPOSED! arriving on May 7, it's been a busy time . It's spring, after all, and I need to get outside to clean up after Old Man Winter and get ready to plant flowers.

 I'll get you a mummy activity come fall. In the meantime, how about planting a flower-and-herb version of an Elizabethan knot garden?

Like Elizabeth Tudor, England's Queen Elizabeth I?  Of course you can. Why Knot?

There's an excellent example of a knot garden here in the U.S. at the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There, head gardener Jeff Lewis cares for the twining shrubs that look like knots, and he plants the spaces in between them with herbs in spring.

Jeff shared a wonderful photo of this garden in early spring, when it’s easy to see “the bones” of the garden before lush green herbs take over in summer. Go on over to their website at http://elizabethangardens.org/

It takes years to establish a knot garden like this one, but you can create an updated version to grow in just one summer. All it takes is a bit of space, bedding plants, a digging tool, fertilizer, and regular watering.  
Here's a waterwise example from the Cooperative Extension website: https://articles.extension.org/pages/61669/water-wise-knot-gardens

 From Elizabeth I: the People's Queen comes this activity. It's knot a problem, I promise!

Photo credit: Double Down Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Plant a Garden

by Brandon Marie Miller

Ah, spring. Trees bloom and leaf out, flowers dot gardens with color. Thunderstorms rumble and sometimes, even a bit of late snow flies. As life renews itself in spring, my mind jumps ahead to summer gardens-- Flowers, fruits and veggies.

When I researched my biographies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson I learned how much both men loved their gardens. They ordered bulbs and seeds from Europe, traded plants with friends and grafted plants together to create new ones. Both GW and TJ grew a huge variety of vegetables and herbs. Jefferson experimented with 330 varieties of more than 70 types of vegetables. Washington planted cherry, fig, apple and pear trees as well as trees of pecan and hickory nuts.

Kitchen garden at George Washington's home, Mount Vernon