Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville, Theory and Practice of Gardening (1709)

The handbook of the French formal garden as Le Nôtre had made it: how to choose the site and lay out the whole, how to design parterres, bosquets, allées, water and ornaments, and how to set them out on the ground and plant them.

The book appeared anonymously in 1709 and was long credited to the architect Alexandre Le Blond, who drew many of its plates; its author was a young Parisian collector and naturalist, Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765). It codified the gardens of Versailles, Marly and Chantilly into rules that any owner could follow, and was translated into English (by John James, 1712) and German, so that it governed the gardens of residences across Europe for half a century.

Dezallier opens with four maxims: that art should give way to nature; that a garden should not be made too dark with trees, nor too open and bare; and that it should always look larger than it really is. He then sets the parts in order from the house outward: the parterres first, low and flat so that the view from the windows is free, then the bosquets and groves, then the long allées that carry the eye to the horizon.

The book, part by part

I Part I: Design

The four maxims; the choice of site; the general distribution of a garden; parterres of embroidery, of compartments, English (grass) and water parterres; bosquets, cabinets and salles de verdure; allées and their proportions; porticoes, treillage, stairs and terraces.

Rules: Parterres by the house, woods beyond

II Part II: Practice

Geometry on the ground: setting out lines, curves and parterre patterns with cords and stakes; levelling; planting and the care of trees, hedges and turf; fountains and the conduct of water.

Rules drawn from Theory and Practice of Gardening

The parterre longer than it is wide

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

The allée widens with its length

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)

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.