French Formal Garden vs Parterre
フランス式整形庭園 / パルテール（刺繍花壇）
Both sit in Garden Styles, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other layout. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
French Formal Garden
The garden of axis, symmetry and perspective that Le Nôtre perfected at Versailles. Shears and sheets of water discipline nature into geometry, and power becomes visible as spatial order.
Parterre
A flat bed in which clipped box embroiders arabesques into the ground. It was designed to be looked down on from the floors above, turning the ground into ornament and gardening into graphic design.
| French Formal Garden | Parterre | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 17th century– | 17th century– |
| Family | Garden Styles | Garden Styles |
| Kind | Style | Layout |
| Cues | Axes running to the vanishing point / Strict symmetry / Clipped geometry / Water mirrors and the grand canal | Box arabesques / Gravel and turf as ground colors / Made for the view from above / Symmetrical development |
| Best used for | Forecourts that state the standing of the building behind them · Squares and courts meant to be seen from an upper storey | Designing a forecourt that will be seen from upper floors or a stair · Laying a pattern at an institutional entrance that holds all year |
| Type | Inscriptions and statue titles sit on the axis, paired left and right | Keep the arabesque one constant width, set its crossings first |
| Composition | Run one axis from the building center and mirror everything across it | Develop symmetrically about the axis, close with a single border |
| Material | Clip to a level line and use water as a mirror for the sky | Clipped box as line, gravel, turf and sand as ground colors |
| Caution | Axis and symmetry get copied without designing the recession, and with no budget for the labor of clipping, the outlines slacken within a few years. | Placed where nobody can look down on it, the pattern never reads and only expensive clipping remains, its point entirely lost. |