Parterres have played a part in English gardens across the centuries. They’re a progression from the knot gardens of medieval and Elizabethan eras, and some garden historians believe they became particularly fashionable in the first half of the 17th century when Henrietta Maria, newly married to King Charles I, brought her favourite landscape designer over from France to remodel her English gardens in a more opulent French style.
Elaborate parterres had been popular in France since the end of the 16th century when Claude Mollet designed complex patterned gardens at the royal palaces of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Fontainebleau. The word itself is French, meaning ‘on the ground’ – these features were usually built on a level part of the garden close to the house so they could be viewed from the windows
