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—— 
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PARTERRE. 
309 
PARTERRE. 
roots of Broom and Furze.—See 
OrosBa'NCHE. 
Parason Acacra— Robinia um- 
braculifera. 
Partrerre.— The French term 
for what in England is called a 
flower-garden, but which in France 
in former times, when the werd | 
was originated, was most frequently 
a figure formed on the surface of 
the ground by turf, box, and gravel | 
or sand, with occasional flowers or 
low shrubs. In these parterres 
flowers and shrubs were altogether 
secondary objects, the main features 
being the compartments of turf and 
the curious seroll-work of box. The 
French divided their parterres into 
three kinds: parterres of embroide- 
ry; which consisted chiefly of scroll- 
work or arabesque figures of box 
kept low by clipping; parterres de 
compartiments, which consisted 
chiefly of beds of turf of different 
forms, varied by small shrubs. clip- 
ped into regular shape; and par- 
terres anglaises, which consisted of 
turf in large masses, with beds of 
flowers surrounded by box. Par- 
terres of embroidery are now rarely 
to be met with either in France or 
England; they have been totally 
destroyed at Versailles and Fon- 
tainebleau ; and in England, though 
we have old French gardens at 
Levens near the Lakes of West- 
moreland, at Roxtun near Banbury, 
and other places, yet almost the 
only parterres of embroidery of long 
standing are at Wentworth Castle, 
Yorkshire, and Holland House, in 
Kensington, and the more recently 
formed ones at Wrest in Bedford- 
shire, and Trentham Hall in Staf- 
fordshire. Parterres of compart- 
ments among the French generally 
consisted of one square, round, or 
parallelogram plot of turf in the 
centre, surrounded by a border of 
narrow beds planted with flowers 
and low shrubs, and these are at 
England. Parterres anglaises may 
now be considered as inciuded in 
the parterres of compartments ; be. 
cause the French do not now cut 
up the ground into so many beds as 
formerly, and plant a great many 
more flowers than they did in the 
time of Le Nétre. In all the French 
parterres of former times, and also 
in most of those imitated in Eng- 
land, the groundwork, or, in other 
words, the little walks on which the 
arabesques of box appeared to be 
planted, were of different coloured 
sands, gravel, shells,, powdered 
stones or brick, so as to exhibit dif- 
ferent colours in the same parterre ; 
but that practice is now left off both 
on the Continent and in Britain. 
In a word, parterres are now as- 
semblages of flowers in beds or 
groups, either on a ground of lawn 
or gravel; in the former case the 
beds are dug out of the lawn, and 
in the latter they are separated 
from the gravel by edgings of box 
or stone, or of some plant, or dura- 
ble material. The shape of the 
beds in either case depends on the 
style of architecture of the house to 
which the parterre belongs, or to 
the taste and fancy of the owner. 
Whatever shapes are adopted, they 
are generally combined into a sym- 
metrical figure; for when this is 
not the case the collection of beds 
ceases to be a parterre, or a flower- 
garden, and can only be designated 
as a group or collection of groups 
on a lawn. Hence it is that all 
parterres and regular flower-gar- 
dens ought to be separated from the 
scenery by which they are surround- 
ed by a line of demarcation, such 
as a low architectural wall with a 
balustrade and piers, and vases; 
a low evergreen hedge, a canal, a 
ridge of rockwork, a sunk fence 
with the sides of turf or of stone, a 
raised fence with the ridges and top 
of turf, or a raised terrace-walk of 
present common both in France and ) grass or gravel. 
rd 
* 
