The flowers in the "knots" were perennials, planted so as to gain uniformity of height; and those that had affinity for one another were placed side by side. No attempt was made to group them; and no attempt was made to get _masses_ of separate color, what Locker-Lampson calls "a mist of blue in the beds, a blaze of red in the celadon jars" and what we try for to-day. On the contrary, the Elizabethan gardener's idea was to mix and blend the flowers into a combination of varied hues that melted into one another as the hues of a rainbow blend and in such a way that at a distance no one could possibly tell what flowers produced this effect. This must have required much study on the part of the gardeners, who kept pace with the seasons and always had their beds in bloom. Sir Henry Wotton, Ambassador to Venice in the reign of James I, and author of the "Elements of Architecture," but far better known by his lovely verse to Elizabeth of Bohemia beginning, "You meaner beauties of the night," was an ardent flower lover. He was greatly impressed by what he called "a delicate curiosity in the way of color": "Namely in the Garden of Sir Henry Fanshaw at his seat in Ware Park, where I well remember he did so precisely examine the _tinctures_ and _seasons_ of his _flowers_ that in their _settings_, the _inwardest_ of which that were to come up at the same time, should be always a little _darker_ than the _outmost_, and so serve them for a kind of gentle _shadow_, like a piece not of _Nature_ but of _Art_." Browne also gives a splendid idea of the color effect of the garden beds of this period: As in a rainbow's many color'd hue, Here we see watchet deepen'd with a blue; There a dark tawny, with a purple mix'd; Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt; A bloody stream into a blushing run, And ends still with the color which begun; Drawing the deeper to a lighter strain, Bringing the lightest to the deepest again; With such rare art each mingled with his fellow, The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow; Like to the changes which we daily see Around the dove's neck with variety; Where none can say (though he it strict attends), Here one begins and there another ends. Using such cunning as they did dispose The ruddy Piony with the lighter Rose, The Monkshood with the Buglos, and entwine The white, the blue, the flesh-like Columbine With Pinks, Sweet-Williams; that, far off, the eye Could not the manner of their mixture spy. By the side of the showy and stately flowers, as well as in kitchen gardens, were grown the "herbs of grace" for culinary purposes and the medicinal herbs for "drams of poison." Rosemary--"the cheerful Rosemary," Spenser calls it--was trained over arbors and permitted to run over mounds and banks as it pleased. Sir Thomas More allowed it to run all over his garden because the bees loved it and because it was the herb sacred to remembrance and friendship.