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A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of the garden nearest the house, perhaps after a terrace. The view of it from inside the house, especially from the upper floors, was a major consideration in its design. The word "parterre" was and is used both for the whole part of the garden containing parterres and for each individual section between the "alleys". The pattern or the borders of the beds may be marked by low, tightly pruned, evergreen hedging, and their interiors may be planted with flowers or other plants or filled with mulch or gravel. Parterres need not have any flowers at all, and the originals from the 17th and 18th centuries had far fewer than modern survivals or reconstructions. Statues or small evergreen trees, clipped as pyramids or other shapes, often marked points in the pattern, and an allée of medium-sized trees often ran along the side. Otherwise, the parterre was normally an area of openness, with the various elements very low, contrasting with the height of the house, and the taller areas of the garden beyond. This made the parterre both a place to be seen, as typically everyone walking in the parterre, and observers from around it, could see everyone else, but also a place for the most private conversations, as no one else could approach without being seen. The paths are constituted with gravel or (much less often in historical examples)
turf grass A lawn is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height with a lawnmower (or sometimes grazing animals) and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. L ...
. French parterres developed from the patterned compartments of French Renaissance gardens, what are called in England
knot garden A knot garden is a garden of formal design in a square frame, consisting of a variety of aromatic plants and culinary herbs including germander, marjoram, thyme, southernwood, lemon balm, hyssop, costmary, acanthus, mallow, chamomile, rosemary ...
s. Later, in the 17th century
Baroque garden The Baroque garden was a style of garden based upon symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. The style originated in the late-16th century in Italy, in the gardens of the Vatican and the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome and in the ga ...
, they became more elaborate and stylised, on the continent often using the ''parterre en broderie'' style of spreading and curving branches, derived from
embroidery Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on c ...
. The
French formal garden The French formal garden, also called the (), is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the ...
parterre inspired many similar parterres throughout Europe, though the parterres in the
gardens of Versailles The Gardens of Versailles (french: Jardins du château de Versailles ) occupy part of what was once the ''Domaine royal de Versailles'', the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover som ...
are rather muted; those in palace gardens in the
Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a Polity, political entity in Western Europe, Western, Central Europe, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, dissolution i ...
and eventually Russian-controlled eastern Europe, are often more extensive and extravagant. Parterre-style areas reappeared in many large gardens from the mid-19th century, now much more lavishly planted with bedded-out flowers, and with less strictly geometrical designs. From around the mid-21st century, as interest in Baroque gardens revived, many attempts to recreate or restore Baroque parterres have been made, at least as regards the layout; planting often continues to be much thicker, and the height of hedges higher, than would have been the case in the originals.


History

Claude Mollet Claude Mollet (ca. 1564 – shortly before 1649), ''premier jardinier du Roy'' — first gardener to three French kings, Henri IV, Louis XIII and the young Louis XIV — was a member of the Mollet dynasty of French garden designers in the ...
, from a dynasty of nurserymen-designers that lasted into the 18th century, developed the parterre in
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. His inspiration in developing the 16th-century patterned ''compartimens'' (''i.e.'', simple interlaces formed of herbs, either open and infilled with sand, or closed and filled with flowers) was the painter Etienne du Pérac, who returned from
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
to the
Château d'Anet The Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France. It was built on the former château at the ...
near
Dreux Dreux () is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. Geography Dreux lies on the small river Blaise, a tributary of the Eure, about 35 km north of Chartres. Dreux station has rail connections to Argentan, Paris and Granvi ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, where he and Mollet were working. Around 1595, Mollet introduced compartment-patterned parterres to the royal gardens of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris. Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...
and
Fontainebleau Fontainebleau (; ) is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the ''arrondissement ...
. The fully developed scrolling embroidery-like ''parterres en broderie'' first appear in Alexandre Francini's engraved views of the revised horticultural plans of Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1614. Clipped
boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...
met with resistance from horticultural patrons for its "naughtie smell" as the herbalist
Gervase Markham Gervase (or Jervis) Markham (ca. 1568 – 3 February 1637) was an English poet and writer. He was best known for his work '' The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman'', first publishe ...
described it. By 1638,
Jacques Boyceau Jacques Boyceau, sieur de la Barauderie (ca. 1560 – 1633) was a French garden designer, the superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII, whose posthumously produced ''Traité du iardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l'art. En ...
described the range of designs in boxwood that a horticulturist should be able to cultivate:
"Parterres are the low embellishments of gardens, which have great grace, especially when seen from an elevated position: they are made of borders of several shrubs and sub-shrubs of various colours, fashioned in different manners, as compartments, foliage, embroideries (''passements''),
moresque Moresque is an obsolete alternative term to "Moorish" in English, and in the arts has some specific meanings. By itself, the word is used to describe the stylized plant-based forms of tendrils and leaves found in ornament and decoration in the ...
s,
arabesques The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...
,
grotesque Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...
s, guilloches, rosettes, sunbursts (''gloires''), escutcheons,
coats-of-arms A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in its wh ...
,
monogram A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series o ...
s and
emblem An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Emblems vs. symbols Although the words ''emblem'' and '' symbol'' are often use ...
s (''devises'')."
By the 1630s, elaborate ''parterres de broderie'' appeared at
Wilton House Wilton House is an English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years. It was built on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution o ...
in Wilton,
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
that were so magnificent that they were engraved, which engraving is the only remaining trace of them. "''Parterres de pelouse''" or "''parterres de gazon''" denominate cutwork parterres of low growing herbs (''e.g.'',
camomile Chamomile (American English) or camomile (British English; see spelling differences) ( or ) is the common name for several plants of the family Asteraceae. Two of the species, ''Matricaria recutita'' and ''Anthemis nobilis'', are commonly us ...
) as much as closely scythed
turf grass A lawn is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height with a lawnmower (or sometimes grazing animals) and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. L ...
. The separation of plant beds of a parterre is denominated an "''alley of compartiment''". But these remained relatively rare in England, where many earlier knot gardens were replaced with simpler designs of "
quincunx A quincunx () is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, with four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center. The same pattern has other names, including "in saltire" or "in cross" in heraldry (dep ...
es, squares or rectangles of grass set in gravel with perhaps some topiary, statues or plants in pots at the corners". Many parterre designs were only "cutwork" in grass and gravel, often of different colours. Reddish "brick dust", mostly brick waste crushed to gravel-sized pieces, was a popular addition to stone. These required less maintenance, and looked good from the upper storeys of the house. In country houses the owner was often only in residence in the summer, when the relatively small range of flowers available at the time had mostly finished their display.
Stephen Switzer Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) was an English gardener, garden designer and writer on garden subjects, often credited as an early exponent of the English landscape garden. He is most notable for his views of the transition between the large garden ...
, an English gardener of the early 18th century, advised against using flowers at all in country house gardens for this reason, an extreme position, not often followed:
the nobler Diversions of the Country take place ... fter the end of May.. when the Beauty of Flowers is gone, and Borders are like Graves, and rather a Blemish than Beauty to our finest gardens.
In top gardens flowers in parterres were typically grown in pots in the greenhouse, and placed into the parterre only for as long as their blooms lasted. This was the system at the
Grand Trianon The Grand Trianon () is a French Baroque style château situated in the northwestern part of the Domain of Versailles in Versailles, France. It was built at the request of King Louis XIV of France as a retreat for himself and his ''maîtresse-en ...
sub-palace at Versailles, where the king is said to have arrived for dinner with the garden in one colour of flowers, which had all been changed to another colour by the time he left. The relatively small and enclosed garden of the Trianon, originally called the "Palace of Flora", was in effect the
flower garden A flower garden or floral garden is any garden or part of a garden where plants that flower are grown and displayed. This normally refers mostly to herbaceous plants, rather than flowering woody plants, which dominate in the shrubbery and w ...
of Versailles, and Le Notre said in 1694 that 2,000,000 flower pots were used there over a year. Parterre gardens lost favour in the 18th century and were superseded, within the naturalistic
English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
style, which emerged in England from the 1720s by flower gardens, or shrubberies from the mid-century, both very often planned round a snake-like serpentine path. In particular,
Capability Brown Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English la ...
, the most prolific garden designer of the mid-century, often brought a wide lawn right up to the terrace of the main garden front, to give Neoclassical houses the appearance of classical buildings in paintings by artists such as
Claude Lorrain Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...
. Many English parterres were dug up as a result. The flowering plants were often moved to the side of the house.


''Parterres en broderie''

The ''parterre en broderie'' took its name from contemporary styles of metalwork
embroidery Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on c ...
(''broderie'' in French), then used in the most formal clothes of both men and women at court. Similar styles live on in the goldwork embroidery on
diplomatic uniform Diplomatic uniforms are ornate uniforms worn by diplomats—ambassadorial and consular officers—at public occasions. Introduced by European states around 1800 and patterned on court dress, they were abandoned by most countries in the twentieth ...
s which some, mostly European, countries continue to use to the present day. At the time this style of ornament was used in many media in the
decorative arts ] The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. It includes most of the arts making objects for the interiors of buildings, and interior design, but not usual ...
. The main motifs are usually
wreath A wreath () is an assortment of flowers, leaves, fruits, twigs, or various materials that is constructed to form a circle . In English-speaking countries, wreaths are used typically as household ornaments, most commonly as an Advent and Chri ...
s and
strapwork In the history of art and design, strapwork is the use of stylised representations in ornament of ribbon-like forms. These may loosely imitate leather straps, parchment or metal cut into elaborate shapes, with piercings, and often interwoven in ...
, more rarely they are in the shape of
monogram A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series o ...
s and figures. Generally any hedging was very low, to enable the patterns to be readable from the main rooms facing the garden of the ''
bel étage The ''piano nobile'' (Italian for "noble floor" or "noble level", also sometimes referred to by the corresponding French term, ''bel étage'') is the principal floor of a palazzo. This floor contains the main reception and bedrooms of the hou ...
'' of the house. New houses were often given wide high terraces, from which the parterre could be admired; these were filled in summer with greenhouse plants in pots. No Baroque broderie parterres have been preserved in their entirety in the original, but in the late 20th century there have been increasing attempts to reconstruct them. In Germany, for example, those of Schloss Augustusburg in Brühl (around 1730) or
Schwetzingen Schwetzingen (; pfl, Schwetzinge) is a German town in northwest Baden-Württemberg, around southwest of Heidelberg and southeast of Mannheim. Schwetzingen is one of the five biggest cities of the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis district and a medium-sized ...
(1753–1758) have been reconstructed. In England ''parterres en broderie'' were always rare, "probably there were never more than twenty examples of it in the whole of England". However, Hampton Court was one prominent example.


Plats

A plat (in America entangled with the same word as used for a plot of building land) was a parterre section of plain grass lawn, perhaps with a central feature such as a fountain or statue, and small clipped trees at the corners. A stretch of good lawn was much admired, and these were rather surprisingly popular, especially in England, where year-round rainfall usually meant summer watering was unnecessary to keep a green surface. Other terms included ''tapis vert'' ("green carpet"), the name given to the huge one in the
Gardens of Versailles The Gardens of Versailles (french: Jardins du château de Versailles ) occupy part of what was once the ''Domaine royal de Versailles'', the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover som ...
. In French ''plat'' means "flat". The placing of plats in the most prominent positions of the "best garden" seems to have begun in England in the 1630s, and over the rest of the century a parterre section entirely consisting of plats became a distinct English style, probably used in most gardens, especially those of the
gentry Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle imple and decentfamilies ''Gentry'', in its widest ...
rather than noble magnates. Among the royal palaces,
Somerset House Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("O ...
was converted by
Inigo Jones Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable archit ...
in the 1630s, and the Privy Gardens at
Hampton Court Palace Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. The building of the palace began in 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the chie ...
and
Whitehall Palace The Palace of Whitehall (also spelt White Hall) at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, except notably Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Hen ...
by 1640.Jacques, 69 Whitehall had 16 relatively small plats with statues in the middle, and in 1662 a much larger bowling-green was added alongside. A plat could double as a bowling-green for early versions of
lawn bowl Bowls, also known as lawn bowls or lawn bowling, is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a bowling green, which may be flat (for "flat-gre ...
s, a highly popular, mostly male, sport in England. There were other forms of
ground billiards Ground billiards is a modern term for a family of medieval European lawn games, the original names of which are mostly unknown, played with a long-handled mallet (the '), wooden balls, a hoop (the ''pass''), and an upright skittle or pin (the ' ...
and
lawn game A lawn game is an outdoor game that can be played on a lawn. Many types and variations of lawn games exist, which includes games that use balls and the throwing of objects as their primary means of gameplay. Some lawn games are historical in natu ...
s, that evolved in the 19th century into sports such as
croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the Wor ...
and
lawn tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...
. Before 1600 plats had already become usual for forecourts, which were left plain so as not to distract from the entrance front of the house. The English gardener
Stephen Switzer Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) was an English gardener, garden designer and writer on garden subjects, often credited as an early exponent of the English landscape garden. He is most notable for his views of the transition between the large garden ...
wrote in 1718:
Bowling-green or plain Parterres, the Method of which they
he French He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
own to have receiv’d from England, .... reof the most Use, and is, above all, the beautifullest with us in England, on Account of the Goodness of our Turf, and that Decency and unaffected Simplicity which it affords to the Eye of the Beholder.
On the continent a ''boulingrin'' (a mangled French version of "bowling-green") was a sunken compartment of fine lawn, typically found in the
bosquet In the French formal garden, a ''bosquet'' (French, from Italian ''bosco'', "grove, wood") is a formal plantation of trees in a wide variety of forms, some open at the bottom and others not. At a minimum a bosquet can be five trees of identical s ...
part of the garden rather than among the parterres. In French the name is also used for the game of bowls, and the greens it is played on. Several French writers were ready to concede the superiority of English grass, including Andre Mollet and
Dezallier d'Argenville The family of Dezallier d'Argenville produced two writers and connoisseurs, father and son, in the course of the 18th century. The father, Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (1680–1765) is now best known for writing the fullest French trea ...
; apart from the climate some attributed it to the selection of the turf and the frequency and quality of the cutting. Plats typically came in pairs, one on each side of an allée down the central axis. The garden at
Ham House Ham House is a 17th-century house set in formal gardens on the bank of the River Thames in Ham, south of Richmond in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The original house was completed in 1610 by Thomas Vavasour, an Elizabethan cou ...
near London has been restored, following extensive research, to have a parterre of eight plats, four wide and two deep, facing the main garden front, with a replanted
wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...
beyond. At the side of the house is a smaller and more complicated parterre in compartments, with flowers, now called the "Cherry Garden". Perhaps as a concession to modern taste, the plats are now planted with 500,000 spring bulbs and wild flowers, which are unlikely to have been an original feature. To the French a ''parterre anglais'' (or ''a la anglais'' or ''a la angloise'') meant in the Baroque period a plat edged with a thin border (''plate-bande'') of low flowers.
Antoine Dezallier d’Argenville The family of Dezallier d'Argenville produced two writers and connoisseurs, father and son, in the course of the 18th century. The father, Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (1680–1765) is now best known for writing the fullest French trea ...
's English translation, ''The Theory and Practice of Gardening'' (1712) described these:
PARTERRES after the English Manner are the plainest and meanest of all. They should consist only of large Grass-plots all of a Piece, or cut but little, and be encompassed with a Border of Flowers, separated from the Grass-work by a Path of Two or Three Foot wide, laid smooth and sanded over, to make the greater Distinction
As well as grass, English writers including
Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
and
Sir William Temple Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 162827 January 1699) was an English diplomat, statesman and essayist. An important diplomat, he was recalled in 1679, and for a brief period was a leading advisor to Charles II, with whom he then fell ...
also congratulated themselves on the superiority of the native gravels. From about 1670, perhaps under the influence of Versailles, those English owners who could afford them began to install fountains, generally where alleys between plats met up. Statues in or around 17th-century English parterres tended to be castings in lead from the Low Countries, painted to resemble marble or bronze.


Compartmented parterres

The third main type of parterre covered a wide range of often rather complicated designs, many harking back to the
knot garden A knot garden is a garden of formal design in a square frame, consisting of a variety of aromatic plants and culinary herbs including germander, marjoram, thyme, southernwood, lemon balm, hyssop, costmary, acanthus, mallow, chamomile, rosemary ...
. "Open knots" were complicated designs without interlacing; many gentry owners designed these themselves. These were often more heavily planted with flowering plants, and this style was often used for flower gardens at the side of the house. At its simplest it might just be a group of rectangular flower beds, with alleys around them, or designs in "cutwork".


Revival

In the 19th century parterres were revived in a somewhat different form, coinciding with the availability of
carpet bedding In horticulture, bedding is temporary planting of fast-growing plants into flower beds to create colourful displays, during spring, summer or winter. Plants used for bedding are generally annuals, biennials or Hardiness (plants), tender perennials; ...
, the annual mass planting of non-hardy flowers as segments of colour which constituted a design. Level substrates and a raised vantage point from which to view the design were required, and so the parterre was revived in a modified style. By now a parterre often meant a collection of flower beds in fairly formal shapes, but often avoiding straight lines, arranged on a lawn, perhaps with some gravel paths, as at
Waddesdon Manor Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. Owned by National Trust and managed by the Rothschild Foundation, it is one of the National Trust's most visited properties, with over 463,000 visitors i ...
, a new-build of the late 1870s.
Jane Loudon Jane Wells Webb Loudon (19 August 1807 – 13 July 1858) (also known as Jane C. Loudon) was an English author and early pioneer of science fiction. She wrote before the term was coined, and was discussed for a century as a writer of Gothic fic ...
's ''Gardening for Ladies'' (1845) says:
Parterres of embroidery are now rarely to be met with either in France or England. . . Parterres of compartments. . . are at present common both in France and England...In a word, parterres are now assemblages of flowers in beds or groups, either on a ground of lawn or gravel... The shape of the beds in either case depends on the style of architecture of the house to which the parterre belongs, or to the taste and fancy of the owner. Whatever shapes are adopted, they are generally combined into a symmetrical figure; for when this is not the case the collection of beds ceases to be a parterre, or a flower-garden...In planting parterres there are two different systems; one is to plant only one kind of flower in a bed so as that each bed shall be a mass of one colour, and the other is to plant flowers of different colours in the same bed.
From the 20th century, apart from a few projects aimed at an authentic restoration, where enough information on the old designs exists, newly planted parterres tend to be small but with complex knot-type designs, much more thickly planted and often with higher box edges than would have been the case in the originals. A much larger number of Victorian parterres have survived in something like their original state, both in houses and public parks and other gardens, and these remain attractive to modern visitors. Many restored parterres are increasingly threatened by fungi and insects, especially the
box tree moth ''Cydalima perspectalis'' or the box tree moth is a species of moth of the family Crambidae, first described by Francis Walker, the English entomologist, in 1859. Native to Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, far-east Russia and India, it has invaded E ...
, and alternative species are being explored, for example at
RHS Wisley RHS Garden Wisley is a garden run by the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley, Surrey, south of London. It is one of five gardens run by the society, the others being Harlow Carr, Hyde Hall, Rosemoor, and Bridgewater (which opened on 18 May 2 ...
.


Examples

Parterres tended to survive better the further east one went in Europe, and the imperial Russian palaces have many of the best remaining examples. At Kensington Palace, the planting of the parterres was by Henry Wise, whose nursery was nearby at Brompton. In an engraving from 1707 to 1708, the up-to-date
Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
designs of each section are clipped scrolling designs, symmetrical around a centre, in low hedging punctuated by trees formally clipped into cones; however, their traditional 17th century layout, a broad central gravel walk dividing paired
plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bear ...
s, each subdivided in four, appears to have survived from the Palace's former (pre-1689) existence as Nottingham House. Subsidiary wings have subsidiary parterres, with no attempt at overall integration. At Prince Eugene's
Belvedere Palace The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria, consisting of two Baroque palaces (the Upper and Lower Belvedere), the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape in the third district o ...
, Vienna, a sunken parterre before the façade that faced the city was flanked in a traditional fashion with raised walks from which the pattern could best be appreciated. To either side, walls with busts on
herm Herm (Guernésiais: , ultimately from Old Norse 'arm', due to the shape of the island, or Old French 'hermit') is one of the Channel Islands and part of the Parish of St Peter Port in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. It is located in the English ...
pedestals backed by young trees screen the parterre from the flanking garden spaces. Formal baroque patterns have given way to symmetrical paired free scrolling
rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
arabesques, against the gravel ground. Little attempt seems to have been made to fit the framework to the shape of the parterre. Beyond (in the shadowed near foreground) paired basins have central jets of water. In the UK, modern parterres exist at Trereife House in Penzance (Cornwall), at
Drumlanrig Castle Drumlanrig Castle is situated on the Queensberry Estate in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The category A listed castle is the Dumfriesshire home of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry. It is open to the public at set times. Con ...
in
Dumfriesshire Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries or Shire of Dumfries (''Siorrachd Dhùn Phris'' in Gaelic) is a historic county and registration county in southern Scotland. The Dumfries lieutenancy area covers a similar area to the historic county. I ...
and at
Bodysgallen Hall Bodysgallen Hall is a manor house in Conwy county borough, north Wales, near the village of Llanrhos. Since 2008 the house has been owned by The National Trust. It is a Grade I listed building, currently used as a hotel. This listed building, lis ...
near
Llandudno Llandudno (, ) is a seaside resort, town and community in Conwy County Borough, Wales, located on the Creuddyn peninsula, which protrudes into the Irish Sea. In the 2011 UK census, the community – which includes Gogarth, Penrhyn Bay, Craigsi ...
.Trereife Park
/ref> Examples can also be found in
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, such as at
Birr Castle Birr Castle (Irish: ''Caisleán Bhiorra'') is a large castle in the town of Birr in County Offaly, Ireland. It is the home of the 7th Earl of Rosse and his family, and as such the residential areas of the castle are not open to the public ...
. One of the largest in Britain is at
Cliveden Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern H ...
in
Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...
, which covers an area of ; it consists of symmetrical wedge-shaped beds filled with ''
Nepeta ''Nepeta'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae. The genus name is reportedly in reference to Nepete, an ancient Etruscan city.
'' ("catmint"), ''
Santolina ''Santolina'' is a genus of plants in the chamomile tribe within the sunflower family, primarily from the western Mediterranean region. They are small evergreen shrubs growing tall. The leaves are simple and minute in some species, or pinnate ...
'' and ''
Senecio ''Senecio'' is a genus of flowering plants in the daisy family (Asteraceae) that includes ragworts and groundsels. Variously circumscribed taxonomically, the genus ''Senecio'' is one of the largest genera of flowering plants. Description Morp ...
'', edged with box hedges. Sentinel pyramids of yew stand at the corners. Some early knot gardens have been covered over by lawn or other landscaping but the traces are visible as undulations in the present day landscape. An example of this phenomenon is the early 17th-century garden of
Muchalls Castle Muchalls Castle stands overlooking the North Sea in the countryside of Kincardine and Mearns, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The lower course is a well-preserved Romanesque, double-groined 13th-century tower house structure, built by the Frasers of ...
in
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. At
Charlecote Park Charlecote Park () is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne, about east of Stratford-upon-Avon and south of Warwick, Warwickshire, England. It has be ...
in Warwickshire the original parterre from the 1800s has been recreated on the terrace overlooking the river.


Gallery


Notes


References

*"HEALD",
History of Early American Landscape Design
', Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC).
Parterre
by Anne L. Helmreich * Jacques, David, ''Gardens of Court and Country: English Design 1630-1730'', 2017, Yale University Press, * Quest-Ritson, Charles, ''The English Garden: A Social History'', 2003, Penguin, * Thacker, Christopher, ''The History of Gardens'', 1979,


External links


A History of Garden ArtIllustrated History of Landscape DesignThe Parterre at Waddesdon Manor on Youtube
{{Authority control Types of garden Garden features