French Gardens
French Gardens
When people say French garden it is really hard to pinpoint exactly what they mean, however, there are certain design elements like an emphasis on symmetry and order. Taming nature, if you will. This is usually referred to as the French formal garden or in French jardin à la française meaning "garden in the French manner" which evolved from French Renaissance gardens which were heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance gardens. And when I say heavily influenced, I mean HEAVILY influenced. It's said that Charles VIII of France began having Italian-styled gardens created by Italian garden designers in the late 1400s after his time in Italy. His line of successors followed his lead and over the years it developed into its own style of sorts. This is skimming over quite a bit and singling out just a couple of types or aspects of a French garden.
When people say French garden it is really hard to pinpoint exactly what they mean, however, there are certain design elements like an emphasis on symmetry and order. Taming nature, if you will. This is usually referred to as the French formal garden or in French jardin à la française meaning "garden in the French manner" which evolved from French Renaissance gardens which were heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance gardens. And when I say heavily influenced, I mean HEAVILY influenced. It's said that Charles VIII of France began having Italian-styled gardens created by Italian garden designers in the late 1400s after his time in Italy. His line of successors followed his lead and over the years it developed into its own style of sorts. This is skimming over quite a bit and singling out just a couple of types or aspects of a French garden.
Potager Gardens
A potager garden is a kitchen garden..in French. It’s usually a functional garden incorporating your vegetables with herbs and ornamentals to make it look more pleasing to the eye. They can be orderly like a knot garden or parterre but sometimes are designed to hide their functionality.
Potager du roi or Kitchen Garden of the King at Versailles was created for the Sun king, Louis XIV. It was designed on 29 acres by Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie between 1678 and 1683.
Image by 98201 Seed All Rights Reserved
Parterre
This is a formal type of garden normally placed on a level ground. Sometimes divided into sections or compartments separated by pathways. The word Parterre is derived from the French word par terre meaning ‘in the ground.’ Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau created by Claude Mollet about 1595 was one of the first gardens noted as a Parterre in France but the idea spun out of the Elizabethan English knot garden which spun out of earlier medieval gardens with the idea being to create a pattern seen from above. The Parterre took the idea to a much grander scale.
Other couple other notable examples of Parterre are Witley Court in Worcestershire, UK created by William Andrews Nesfield in the mid-1800s, Osbourne House at Isle of Wight circa the 1840s, some of the gardens at Belvedere Palace in Vienna created by Dominique Girard in the 1700s.
Plats at the far end of the garden of the Belvedere Palace, Vienna by Bernardo Bellotto, c. 1760
References:
Thacker, Christopher, The History of Gardens, 1979, ISBN 978-0856648205
Yves-Marie Allain and Janine Christiany, L’art des jardins en Europe, Citadelles et Mazenod, Paris, 2006
Philippe Prevot, Histoire des jardins, Editions Sud Ouest, 2006