To combine the unity of a central plan with the direction a church needs, plan the space as an oval, set across the axis to widen the view of the altar, or along it to lead the eye towards it.
Parterres by the house, woods beyond
Lay the parterres next to the house, low and flat so that nothing blocks the view from its windows; set bosquets and groves beyond them, and lead long allées out toward the horizon, so that the garden always seems larger than it is.
Dezallier d’Argenville turned Le Nôtre’s practice into a book of rules. Next to the house come the parterres, the richest being the parterre de broderie, scrolls of clipped box on coloured gravel, meant to be read from the windows like a carpet. Beyond them the bosquets are blocks of trees enclosing green rooms, cabinets and fountains. The allées carry the axes of the house out to the edge of the land.
His four maxims govern the whole: art must yield to nature; the garden must not be darkened by too many trees, nor left bare; and it must seem larger than it is.
Related rules
Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Make the parterre oblong rather than square, since figures somewhat oblong look better on the ground than square ones; later practice made it as broad as the front of the house and about twice as long.
parterre oblong; later practice: width ≈ house front, length ≈ 2 × width
Proportion the width of an allée to its length: a walk of about 100 toises (some 200 m) should be 5 or 6 toises wide, one of 200 toises 7 or 8, and so on, so that a long walk does not seem to narrow to a slot in the distance.
100 toises long → 5–6 wide · 200 → 7–8 · 300 → 9–10 · 400 → 10–12 (1 toise ≈ 1.95 m)
Organise the whole garden on one axis from the centre of the house to the horizon; lay out the parts symmetrically about it, and use water, slopes and hidden changes of level so that the view along it reveals the garden by stages.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Parterres by the house, woods beyond”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/dezallier-parterre. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.