French Garden Nursery Landscaping Guide
French Garden Design Ideas With Style
By Suzzie T Franklin
French garden with a parterre is a formal garden with flower
beds. There are many ideas you can use in your backyard, to make
the yard much more interesting, by including a centerpiece, surrounded
by flower beds and creating geometric shapes with hedges and shrubs.
If you have a love for gardening, then creating your own French
garden in your yard, may be one of the better garden designs you
can use. Especially if you want to impress visitors to your home,
with the art you create using living plants.
Rather than use a haphazard method where you put bits and pieces
on your landscape, you can use better ideas with style when creating
your French garden.
Symmetrical And Geometrically Laid Out Trees
When one speaks of the French style in garden design, one is
normally talking about the formal gardens that were so popular
in European society in previous centuries.
Formally arranged gardens began in 16th century Italy but it
was French gardeners who developed the style and popularized it
across the continent. Some of the best examples of symmetrical
and geometrically laid out trees, hedges, lawns and shrubs can
be found at grand houses with a French garden.
A Formal Garden With Flower Beds
The garden designer, Claude Mollet promoted the concept of parterre,
a formal garden with flowerbeds. This type of French garden remained
common throughout the 18th century. An influential book on garden
design was published in 1709.
Written by Dezallier d’Argenville, it translated as The Theory
of the Practical Garden. English and German editions came out
and it became the blueprint of the French garden style of formal
garden for some time to come.
A Series Of Gardens At The Palace of Versailles
Most people agree that the crowning glory of the formally arranged
garden is to be found at the Palace of Versailles in France. It
is a series of gardens, planned by Andre Le Notre and is one of
the most ambitious landscaped gardens ever commissioned.
It incorporates greenery, sculpture, several water fountains,
gravel, stone and parterres. The jewel in this crown is the central
Grand Canal.
The grand opulence of such gardens is of course, prohibitively
expensive for most establishments and they went out of fashion
anyway as other ideas gained favor. However, there was a resurgence
of interest at the start of the 20th century.
Formal Terrace Garden At Dunbarton Oaks
The landscape architect Beatrice Farrand designed formal terrace
gardens for the grounds at Dunbarton Oaks, an historically important
19th century mansion in Washington DC. The work was done between
1922-1947 and the ten acres of garden, which are open to the public,
has been universally praised.
Another example is the Conservatory Garden within Central Park
in New York City. The six acres of landscaping is the only formal
garden in the park. It attracts a lot of visitors and wedding
ceremonies have been performed there.
Three Dancing Maidens In Central Park
This part of the park opened to the public in 1937 and it was
designed in three different sections, each one in a distinct style.
The divide is between French, Italian and English style layout.
The French garden part has a focal point at the center of a sculpture
and fountain called Three Dancing Maidens. A parterre bed surrounds
the fountain where tulips bloom in the spring and chrysanthemums
come out in the fall.
Improving Your Backyard Landscape With Garden Design Ideas
If you are looking for garden design ideas, there are plenty
of ideas you can use to beautify your landscape by looking at
French gardens. You may start with the concept of a parterre,
where your garden can be surrounded by flower beds.
If you are thinking to include a centerpiece in your yard, then
you may look at incorporating flower beds close to the centerpiece
The blooming flowers will be the icing on the cake. Especially
when you include annuals and perennials that will bloom at different
times of the season.
Creating Art With Hedges, Shrubs And Trees
Another idea, is to grow trees, hedges and shrubs to create art
in your front and backyard. For example, you can grow plants to
create geometric shapes, including shapes of animals and people.
A shape of a dog created with hedges and shrubs is a popular concept.
There are some of the many ideas you can use to add style to
your landscape with a French garden.
About the Author:
Suzzie T Franklin has written a number of articles on gardening
and landscaping including
White Flowers,
Fruit Trees,
Tole Painting,
Lady Slipper Flower,
Plastic Flower Pot,
Zen Garden,
Wire Topiary Frames,
Window Bird Feeders,
Planting Guide,
Flower Seeds,
Gardening Vegetable,
Cherry Blossom.
Keep a lookout for more of his articles on this website.
Little Known Gardening Facts....
What is the difference between annuals and perennials?
Both are, of course, plants but the difference
is in how long they last and how often you have to replant them.
Annuals must be replanted every year. Examples of annuals are
any type of vegetable, sunflowers and flowers such as violets.
Perennials are plants that will renew themselves. They include
trees, bulb plants such as lilies, tulips and include roses and
other hardy plants that go dormant that during the winter months.
Most ornamental grasses are considered to be perennials.
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