The Forms of Parterre: French Gardens

By the end of the seventeenth century the specialists had analyzed their craft and described eleven different types. To us now most of these distinctions appear to be based upon no essential difference. No. VI of the list was: `The Form of a Parterre partly cut work and partly green Turf with Borders. These Parterres are esteemed according to their Design and their Symmetry. They look very well in great gardens as well as small, the verdure of the grass, and the Enamel of the Flowers with which the Compartments ought to be filled according to the different seasons of the year, present a charming object to the sight. These parterres may likewise be set off with such pots as I mentioned before or surrounded with Boxes filled with Orange Trees or with other shrubs of like Nature.' No. VII, on the other hand, was: `The Form of a Parterre with cut work of Grass and Embroidery in the middle and with Borders of Grass on the outsides. This sort of Design is very agreeable and serves for a great ornament to a garden, especially where the grass work is well kept up, the Box well ordered, and the grass work well cut; and to give it yet a farther Beauty, you may fill the Flourishings and Branch work with a black earth, provided the Paths or Alleys be covered with a yellow or white sand, different colours serving to set off the Parterre the better.' Miller's Dictionary in 1724 mentions several sorts of parterre including bowling greens `or plain parterres'. These are considered most beautiful in England because of the quality of English turf and because of `the decency and unaffected simplicity it affords the eye'. Translated to France as it was in the eighteenth century this peculiarly English parterre became a `boulingrin' and was thought by the French to be derived from some combination of words which meant a sunken parterre or a bowl-in-the-ground. It was not unusual for the French to place a statue, fountain, pond, or bush in the middle of their `boulingrin'; bowls is not a French game. The parterre was really the heart of the garden proper. The unification of the compartiments de broderie so that individual beds were complementary in a symmetrical design grew to govern the ground plan of the whole garden.