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These flat patterned gardens were already being called parterres in sixteenth century France, but the Italians didn't begin to use the word until the seventeenth century, when they began to imitate French gardens.
The compartments of small planting beds which were separated by narrow paths evolved into cutwork parterres, which the French called parterres de pièces coupés . These were the two dominant styles of parterres, it was usual for a French château to have a parterre de broderie below the windows of the most important rooms, and to one side of the chateau there would be a parterre de pièces coupés, this would serve as the flower garden. There were other sorts of parterres, in a water parterre, the design was formed out of small pools separated by paths. In the simplest kind of parterre, the design was composed out of mown grass and colored sand or gravel, this was known as a Parterre à l'anglais , as the name indicates, this style was especially popular in England. It is important to remember that both the Italian compartimenti and the French parterres were usually backed by small groves of densely planted trees. The Italians called these groves boscos, the French called them bosquets, the English called them boskets. Without the trees these flat designs could seem a bit arid, especially when they were used on a grand scale, as they were in the gardens at the palace of Versailles. The parterres of seventeenth century France remained fashionable for most of the eighteenth century; they were imitated by every prince in Europe, but by the middle of the eighteenth century, a revolution in garden design was transforming England. The formal gardens were being swept away, to allow for the creation of landscape gardens. Formal gardens became just one approach to garden design, they were no longer the typical gardens of Western Civilization.
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