The first French treatise to treat the garden as a matter of design and not only of cultivation, by the superintendent of the royal gardens under Louis XIII: the soils and plants first, then the ornaments, with the parterre placed where it can be seen from above.
Boyceau (c. 1560–c. 1633) was a Protestant gentleman from Saintonge who became superintendent of the king’s gardens. He worked at the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, where the parterres of about 1612 for Marie de Médicis are attributed to him, and at Louis XIII’s first small château at Versailles. His treatise appeared after his death, in 1638, published by his nephew Jacques de Menours, with engraved designs for parterres.
The book is in three parts: nature (the elements, soils and plants), cultivation (planting and the care of trees), and ornament, which is the design of the garden itself. Boyceau asks that a garden be planned as a whole in proportion to the house, that its walks be broad in proportion to their length, and that parterres, being low and flat, be laid out where they are seen from the windows or from a raised terrace, since their patterns are lost to someone standing among them. His plates show some of the first designs for the parterre de broderie in scrolls of box.
The book, part by part
I Book I: Nature
The elements, soils, waters and the nature of plants.
II Book II: Cultivation
Planting, grafting and the care of trees and hedges.
III Book III: Ornament
The distribution of the garden: parterres, walks, palisades, fountains and grottoes, with plates of parterre designs.