2. French Formal Garden
• The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française (literally,
"garden in the French manner" in French), is a style of garden based
on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is
generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the
17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and
widely copied by other European courts.
3. Common characteristics of a French garden:
• The residence - Should be the number
one focal point in the French landscape
style. The home is often the center point
of the design with large paths that
provide axial views.
• Geometric plan - Virtually everything in
the design is geometric and planned with
symmetry.
• Water - Is incorporated as a number one
element within the landscape. Referred
to as “reflecting pools” in circular, oval
and rectangular shapes.
• Terraces - Are located in the landscape
where the entire garden and all of its
detail can be viewed.
4. • Parterres -The intricate patterns
created from hedged shrubs or
planting beds are usually designed in
near proximity to the residence.
These designs are less detailed the
further away they are from the
house.
• Statuary -Is a key feature as your
making your way through the French
garden. During the rise of the French
garden design era, Follies were
introduced as a type of statuary in
the garden. A folly is a building
constructed for decoration, the point
was to create these garden
ornaments that were beyond the
typical garden sculpture.
5. Elements within French gardens:
Concrete balustrade cast iron seating Fountains
pea gravels Cast iron/wood planters simple elegent furnitures
7. Key Features
• The focus of the garden tends to be the house, usually a
palace or chateau and paths radiate out of this creating long
axial views.
• A geometric plan is used and symmetary is very important.
• A central axis leads away from the house perpendicular to the
house.
• Paths tend to be gravel and edged with clipped hedges and
topiary laid out in symmetrical patterns.
• Statuary is often used in French Garden Design.Pavillions and
“follies”are often incorporated too.
8. •The French gardens were inspired by the “Italian
Renaissance garden”.
•Symmetry and geometry are the keywords when
designing such gardens.
•The whole of garden is composed like a painting reaching
for pure aesthetical qualities.
•Like a painting, it is also created to be seen as a whole.
The French Garden
9. The First French Garden
Creating a setting for the ‘Chat Eau Vaux-I e-vi. And outbuildings
out of a wild area of around 100 acres(40hectares)by LE NOTRE
CREATED for the first and only time in the 17th century,A perfect
harmony between architecture and its
environment(landscaping).
10. example of french landscape
Parc Monceau
• Rotunda, in Parc Monceau, (1787) built as part
of the Wall of the Farmers-General
• Parc Monceau (French pronunciation: [paʁk
mɔ̃so]) is a public park situated in the 8th
arrondissement of Paris, France, at the
junction of Boulevard de Courcelles, Rue de
Prony and Rue Georges Berger. At the main
entrance is a rotunda. The park covers an area
of 8.2 hectares (20.3 acres).
11. Features
• Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Le Parc Monceau, oil on canvas, 1877
• The park is unusual in France due to its "English" style: its informal layout,
curved walkways and randomly placed statues distinguish it from the more
traditional, French-style garden. It includes a collection of scaled-down
architectural features, or follies — including an Egyptian pyramid, a Chinese
fort, a Dutch windmill, and Corinthian pillars. A number of these are masonic
references, reflecting the fact that Philippe d'Orléans was a leading freemason.
Parc Monceau includes statues of famous French figures including Guy de
Maupassant, Frédéric Chopin, Charles Gounod, Ambroise Thomas, Alfred de
Musset, and Edouard Pailleron.
• Today, the park has play areas for children and remains very popular with local
residents and their families. The site is an active free Wi-Fi area, for computer
users looking for Internet access.
• Parc Monceau is open daily from sunrise to sunset, with extended hours in the
summer months. There are nine gated entries that are monitored by a fifth-
generation park watchman who lives above the royal rotunda at the north
entrance.[citation needed] The park is listed as grade II semi-private and the six
private residences located directly on the park have twenty-four-hour access to
the grounds.
12. The classical colonnade in
Parc Monceau (1778)
The Egyptian Pyramid
(1778) in Parc Monceau
Parc Monceau : Denkmal Guy
de Maupassan
Parc Monceau Paris - The
Italian Bridge
13. The Palace of Versailles.
Gardens of the Château de Chantilly The "Basin of Apollo" in the Gardens of
Versailles.
Parterres of the Orangerie at the Palace of
Versailles
Gardens of the Grand Trianon at the
Palace of Versailles.
14. Plants and Trees to use in
French Formal Design
• Tress are planted in straight lines and clipped to keep a perfect shape and
size. They may be formed into shapes to form topiary.
• Trees used in the “Gardens of Versaille” were:-
Hornbeam,Beech,Chestnut,Elm and Linden for the most part.
• Hornbeam and Beech are easy to prune and shape of making them
particularly good trees for formal gardens.
• The chestnut group is a genus (Castanea) of eight or
nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae
native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.
• Elm tree is the genus a tree of the genus ulmus of the family ulmaceae,
large deciduous trees with alternate stipulate leaves and small apetalous
flowers.
• Linden tree is made up of lime-wood.
16. • Hedges:
The clipped hedges are usually
box,lavender,rosemary and
occasionally santoline.Regular
trimmimg to stop them going
‘leggy’ and ‘woody’ is important.
• Vegetables:
Many French Chateax have
wonderful vegetable gardens
with the vegetables laid out in
patterns and parterres in the
style of the ornamental formal
gardens.
Plants and Trees to use in
French Formal Design
17. • Plants:
Bedding plants and bulbs are popular
choices for parterres with for example
parterres filled with bulbs in formal
pattern for spring flowering and then
taken out and replaced with bedding
plants for the latespring and summer.
18. Colors, Flowers and Trees.
• Blue, pink, white and mauve. Brighter colors
(yellow, red, orange).
• The Palace used jonquil bulbs, cyclamen,
and lily plants.
• Hornbeam, elm, linden, and beech trees.
• There were also chestnut and Acacia trees.
19.
20. Key Features
• Water is often a key features of French garden design and lots of round
pools and long rectangles of water will be incorporated,the reflection of
the water adding to the symmetry and tranguillity of the scene.Fountains
and casedes are also very common features.
• Close to the house planting is kept low and tends to consist of parterres
and which are close to the house can be quite intricately patterned and
will tend to become more simple further from the house.
• Further from the house paths are often edged with trees these are almost
always manipulated in some way. Trees are always planted in straight lines
adding perspective and reinforcing the symmetry of the garden.
21.
22. Adding Aesthetics…
• Most French gardens were designed to be looked at
from specific places such as terraces or balconies.
• The overall impression of the French landscaping
style is one of harmony one of the power of man
over nature, where every tree and every bush is
given a chosen location and shape.
