GARDENING UNDER WILLIAM AND MARY 205 
on ; cut out curiously into embroidery of flowers, and shapes 
of arabesques, animals, or birds, or feuillages, and the small 
alleys or intervals filled with several coloured sands and dust 
with much art, with but few flowers in such knots, and those 
only such as grow very low lest they spoil the beauty of the 
embroidery/’ Parterre is thus explained in Millers Diction¬ 
ary , 1724 : f ‘ A level division of ground, which for the most 
part faces the South, and is best in front of a House, and is gener¬ 
ally furnished with greens and flowers. There are several sorts 
of parterres, as bowling-green, or plain parterres, and parterres 
of embroidery. . . . Plain parterres most beautiful in England 
by reason of their turf, and that decency and unaffected 
simplicity it affords the eye ; others are cut into shell and scroll 
work, with sand alleys between them, which are the finest 
paterre works esteemed in England.” 
In The Retired Gardener , translated from the French of 
Louis Liger, by London and Wise, no less than eleven sorts 
of parterres are described, but all are merely variations of 
design in grass, beds or cut-work, and patterns of scrolls and 
foliage or “ embroidery, like we have on our cloaths.” The 
two following are examples of his descriptions : No. VI. “ The 
Form of a Parterre partly cut-work and partly green Turf 
with Borders. These Parterres are esteem’d according to 
their Design and their Symmetry. They look very well in great 
gardens as well as small, the verdure of the grass, and the 
Enamel of the Flowers with which the Compartments ought 
to be fill’d according to the different seasons of the year, present 
a charming object to the sight. These parterres may likewise 
be set off with such Pots as I mentioned before i.e ., Dutch 
jars) or surrounded with Boxes fill’d with Orange Trees or 
with other shrubs of like Nature.” VII. “ The Form of a 
Parterre with cut-work of Grass and Imbroidery in the middle 
and with Borders of Grass on the outsides. This sort of Design 
is very agreeable and serves for a great ornament to a garden, 
especially where the grass-work is well kept up, the Box 
well order’d, and the grass-work well cut; and to give it yet 
a farther Beauty, you may fill the Flourishings and Branch- 
work with a black earth, provided the Paths or Alleys be 
cover’d with a yellow or white sand, different colours serving 
to set off the Parterre the better.” In some cases the plot was 
/ 
