The French Garden

Nothing says grandeur like a French garden. These formal, highly stylized gardens were designed to streach out over the properties of noblility to display wealth and power, as well as demostrate order and human control over the landscape. Even if your home’s not quite the size of Versailles, you can still scale down this grand style and incorperate French landscaping methods into your home’s landscape.

Planning

Because of the formal arrangement of the traditional French garden, if the entire landscaping plan will be based on this style, planning on paper or with landscaping software is a must.

Allées

Allées -- walkways bordered by trees or clipped hedges -- formed the framework of French landscaping. These were the base around which the plants and other elements were arranged. The goose-foot, a circular area at the junction of several allées, was a common feature of these walkways. If you have pathways coming from several different directions in your landscape, they can be jointed to meet at a point with trimmed shrubbery, roses, or other plants and seating.

Parterres

These elaborate patterns on the ground were a development on the knot garden. Parterres were usually coloured earth, rather than plants. The most elaborate were known as 'parterres de broderie' -- embroidery on thegrounds. You can make a scaled-down version, designed by creating patterns through the landscape as you would for a path and filling these "paths" with colored dirt such as red or yellow clay, or dark compost-like soil.

Pools and canals

The pools in traditional French gardens were build in geometric shapes (usually very large rectangles) and canals were used to connect pools. Fountains with playful jets of water were also popular. In smaller areas, these formal pools work best as focal points. For more on building pools, see Building a Backyard Fish Pond. Fish optional, of course!