Parterre

History

The form, materials, and associated meanings of parterre all changed markedly between 1650 and 1850. Stephen Switzer’s Ichnographia rustica (1718) provides a clear introduction to the etymology of the word, establishing that in England it referred to a sharply demarcated, level division of ground that was devoted to greens, flowers, and other vegetation. The feature generally was located near the house, where its design could be appreciated from elevated viewpoints, as well as from terrace walks surrounding them. Alluding to A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s earlier classification (1712) of parterres into four types (embroidery, “compartiment,” English, and cut-work), Switzer announced that the English mode, characterized by “large Grass-Plots all of a Piece, or cut but little, and . . . encompassed with a Border of Flowers,” was the prevailing style in England. Although he preferred more plain designs, Switzer also provided illustrations for rectangular parterres with shell and scroll work that bore a strong resemblance to the designs for embroidery, compartiment, and cut-work parterres noted in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text [Fig. 1].

The patterns described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s and Switzer’s treatises were achieved primarily with grass or turf, iron filings, smith’s dust, black earth, red sand, brick dust, gravel, and cockleshells, despite Jean de La Quintinie’s assertion in 1693 that parterres were flower gardens or flower plots. In Dézallier d’Argenville’s designs, flowers, yews, and other shrubs generally were relegated to the border. Only two of his designs—a parterre of cutwork for flowers and a parterre of orange trees—were devoted to flowers, shrubs, or trees. Although such parterres were not common in the North American context, prominent examples exist, such as the garden at the Governor’s House in New Bern, N.C., which bears a striking resemblance to plans found in British treatises [Fig. 2]. There are many reasons for their rarity. First, the cost was prohibitive for all but the most wealthy. Second, the formality and scale of parterre designs were often regarded as appropriate only to large houses, which were uncommon in the colonial world. Third, the shift away from the ancient or geometric style, in which parterres were featured prominently, began in British and colonial landscape aesthetics in the early eighteenth century (see Ancient style and Geometric style).

In 1728, English writer Batty Langley discouraged the use of embroidery, compartiment, or cut-work parterres by proclaiming that the house should open onto a “plain” parterre—a bordered square of grass, perhaps ith a basin in the center [Fig. 3]. Philip Miller continued this trend in The Gardeners Dictionary (1733). This mode of parterre design was an important antecedent to the practice of placing the house within a lawn setting (see Lawn).

The marked disfavor in which elaborate parterres were held in England by the end of the eighteenth century influenced the reception of them in America. English-born architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1796) disapproved of George Washington’s inclusion of a parterre in the form of a “richly flourishing Fleur de Lis” in the midst of his flower garden, which was otherwise arranged in “squares, and boxed with great precision.” Latrobe complained that the parterre was old-fashioned, an opinion upheld by leading garden treatise writers. British author Charles Marshall (1799) claimed that scrolls and flourishes typical of the embroidery, compartiment, or cut-work parterre “have got out of fashion, as a taste for open and extensive gardening has prevailed.” He recommended instead that parterres be made up of regularized beds, neatly edged with box, and set within a squared plot.

In the nineteenth century, as the function of the so-called “plain,” or unembellished, parterre was replaced slowly by the lawn, the term began torefer exclusively to densely planted beds. These patterns were achieved through an extensive use of plants and shrubs as opposed to the inorganic materials that had been featured in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover, Bernard M’Mahon (1806) argued that the parterre, displaced by the lawn from its position adjacent to the house, could be “introduced in some of the more internal parts” of the pleasure ground, where it could serve as a flower garden and be divided into flower beds edged with box or turf.

In general, “flower garden,” as opposed to “parterre,” became the preferred term to denote a garden space devoted to the display of flowers. For example, in An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1826), J. C. Loudon described the parterre in just a few paragraphs, in contrast to the chapters he devoted to the flower garden. Nevertheless, the term was used by British travelers in America, chiefly to refer to gardens situated near the entrance to the house. Their descriptions, as well as planting advice published in horticulture magazines, reveal that parterres employed a wide variety of vegetation, ranging from herbaceous flowers to flowering shrubs and ornamental or fruit trees, and the use of these plant types depended upon local climate.

The general trend toward the parterre as a planting feature continued into the mid-century. Robert Buist’s 1841 recommendation that the flower garden be composed of scattered groupings of parterres and shrubberies, suggests that parterres were considered more like flower beds than the earlier intricately patterned spaces. Indeed, A. J. Downing, at Montgomery Place in DutchessCounty, N.Y., used the term “parterre” in 1847 to refer to flower beds crowned by vases, while he used the term “flower garden” to refer to the entire ornamental area in front of the greenhouse. The parterre thus denoted a space within the pleasure ground that was densely or intricately planted. As Jane Loudon succinctly stated in 1845, “in a word, parterres are now assemblages of flowers in beds or groups, either on a ground of lawn or gravel.” These mid-nineteenth century parterres might range from the very simple (such as the circular bed of annuals at “D” set within a square of dahlias, which was proposed by the New England Farmer in 1841) [Fig. 4], to the more elaborate (such as the curvilinear design of symmetrical beds divided by walks, as proposed in 1848 by Dr. William W. Valk in the Horticulturalist). In these designs, color contrast was an important consideration, as noted in Jane Loudon’s 1845 treatise.

Although by 1850 the parterre had changed dramatically since the early eighteenth century, the term still retained some of its associations of intricacy and elaboration, as suggested by Joseph Breck’s incorporation of fanciful style with parterre. The term also developed an additional connotation of Frenchness, despite both French and British seventeenth-century treatise writers having traced the word back to a common Latin root. The association with France (particularly of flower beds executed in “regular and intricate figures”) can be attributed to the eighteenth-century division between “plain” British parterres and so-called “French” embroidery, compartiment, or cut-work parterres. This connection may also be linked to the important role that French treatise writers played in establishing the eighteenth-century typology of the parterre [Fig. 5].

-- Anne L. Helmreich