Lay the parterres where they are seen from above, from the windows of the house or from a raised terrace, since their patterns are lost to someone standing among them; keep everything near them low.
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The order of a royal garden
Approach the house by a wide avenue of double or quadruple rows of trees; behind it lay the parterres of embroidery, then parterres of grass, then the groves with their walks and fountains, and close the walks with perspectives that deceive the eye.
André Mollet wrote for princes, and his garden is ordered by rank and distance from the house. The richest and most finely worked part, the embroidery, lies nearest the windows; the simpler grass parterres come next; the groves, which give shade and enclosure, lie beyond; and the long walks lead the eye out. Where land ran out, a painted perspective at the end of a walk could make it seem to go on.
This is the order Le Nôtre followed at Vaux and Versailles and Dézallier d’Argenville set down as rules (Parterres by the house, woods beyond).
Related rules
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, “The order of a royal garden”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/mollet-order-of-parts. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.