Parterres

A parterre is a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of plant beds, typically in symmetrical patterns, which are separated and connected by paths. The borders of the plant beds may be formed with stone or tightly pruned hedging, and their interiors may be planted with flowers or other plants or filled with mulch or gravel. The paths are constituted with gravel or turf grass.

French parterres originated in the gardens of the French Renaissance of the 15th century and often had the form of knot gardens. Later, during the 17th century Baroque era, they became more elaborate and stylised. The French parterre reached its greatest development at the Palace of Versailles, which inspired many similar parterres throughout Europe.

Claude Mollet, the founder of a dynasty of nurserymen-designers that lasted into the 18th century, developed the parterre in France. 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 to the Château d'Anet near Dreux, France where he and Mollet were working. C. 1595 Mollet introduced compartment-patterned parterres to the royal gardens of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau; 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 met with resistance from horticultural patrons for its "naughtie smell" as the herbalist Gervase Markham described it. By 1638, Jacques Boyceau described the range of designs in boxwood that a horticulturist should be able to cultivate:

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