Talk:Parterre

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The Gallery shows four photos of a herbaceous border that is confined to formally shaped beds: its inclusion shows that we don't all understand what a parterre is. The Wikipedia reader must be mystified. --Wetman (talk) 23:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Shown is one half of a small symmetrical parterre: one of two four-part beds flanking a central path (which isn't shown), hedged with Ilex crenata, bordered by pea gravel paths. Modern parterres are often filled with herbaceous planting. Sorry, Wetman, I'm not sure why you think this isn't a parterre. Can you clarify? Jasper33 (talk) 10:43, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Someone who imagines that "Modern parterres are often filled with herbaceous planting" shows complete unfamiliarity with gardens. Hidcote Manor and Sissinghurst Castle Garden, both planted with mixed herbaceous borders within formal structures, and in geometrical patterns on the ground, as their garden plats manifest, must look like parterres to Jasper33, whom I can't help in this. For an example of a parterre at Hidcote, see the "Fuschia Garden", set out with fuschias in season, in shapes defined in box, outlined in bricked pathways. A good introduction, understandable even to someone who has never read anything about gardens, would be Penelope Hobhouse, Planting in Patterns Harper & Row, 1989. I have taken down my copy and shall edit it into the article, for the benefit of those without access to a library, for a start. There are many ways of planting in patterns: a parterre is a parterre. There will not be room for those mistaken— or at least misapplied in this case— and misleading pictures, pretty as they are. --Wetman (talk) 00:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah well, glad you like the pictures, at least. I expect they'll be banished to my user page, but never mind. You’ll have to bear with me, Wetman, as I’m obviously not very good at expressing myself clearly.

First, some parterres filled with mixed herbaceous planting:

• Great Fosters in Surrey: the moat parterre, where 'salvia and alchemilla, purple sage and cranesbill, 'Hidcote' lavender and catmint billow out of the box-edged beds.' ('Great Expectations', Anna Pavord in Gardens Illustrated 91, April 2006, 42-9 – restored parterre)
• Llanerchaeron, Wales ('The Thursday Gardeners', Ambra Edwards in Gardens Illustrated 104, July/August 2005, 80-5 – restored parterre. Pic on p83 shows roses, lobelias and other plants in a mixed herbaceous planting)
• Devils End, Norfolk: 'the parterre is colour-themed with white, mauve and pink amid drought-tolerant grey and silver perennials, sub-shrubs, designed to peak in the autumn with a host of asters. Bearded irises ... add a few surprises in early summer.' ('The Devil's in the Details', Christopher Holliday in The English Garden 127, April 2008, 28-34 – modern parterre)
• Stobshiel House, East Lothian (The Gardener's Book of Colour, Andrew Lawson, 2002, 72)

and those are just from a cursory trawl. Photos show that all the beds are mixed, rather than each bed planted with a block of one plant species.

Your additions from the Hobhouse book would be most informative. I have this from the RHS Dictionary of Gardening Vol 3 (JE-PT), 2nd ed, OUP 1984, 1488:

Parterre: A type of flower bed introduced from France during the Elizabethan era in which designs were worked with bedded plants to represent current embroidery patterns. The term has more recently been used to denote a small enclosure or formal garden laid out in patterned beds.

The RHS definition doesn't put any emphasis on the paths. From my reading around the subject, parterres can be big or small; the interstices can be empty or can be filled with plants. The planting is often a single type of plant en masse, the bedding style favoured by the Victorians. But it can be the less-traditional mixed herbaceous planting, and most modern gardeners also don’t have Versailles-sized plots for their plats, so they adapt with smaller patterns. Modern gardeners have taken the traditional parterre and adapted it.

The photos show a symmetrical geometrical pattern (check), edged with tightly-clipped box (actually Ilex crenata because of the risk of box blight, not yet tightly clipped in the photos as it was newly-planted – check), outlined with gravel paths (check) and designed to be viewed from above (the only way you see it as a whole is from the upper floor off the house – check). The pattern is repeated on the other side of the central brick path, but as I don't have a wide-angle lens on my poxy camera I couldn't get it all in shot without using nausea-inducing Batman-like angles. It is similar to other small modern designs described as parterres.

So as you can see, I am still floundering about why the photos don't show a parterre, especially when such modern designs are regularly described as parterres in magazines like The Garden and Gardens Illustrated, magazines which I would expect to get their terminology correct (as I'm sure you know, the former is the journal of the RHS; Penelope Hobhouse is an associate editor of the latter). I'm not being deliberately obtuse, I genuinely am confused! Jasper33 (talk) 08:34, 19 August 2008 (UTC)