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Each of the four compartments thus made was ornamented with broderies and trimmed hedges, and the open spaces were ingeniously filled with parti-coloured sands, or earth. A parterre of flowers immediately adjoined the palace and rudimentary alleys and avenues stretched off towards the wood.
They may have been indirectly due to woman's love of embroidery and the garden alike. The making of these garden broderies was a highly cultivated art. Pierre Vallet, embroiderer to Henri IV, created much in his line of distinction and note, and acquired an extensive clientele for his flowers and models.
The Grand Siècle lent a profound majesty to royal and noble dwellings, and its effect is no less to be remarked upon than the character of their gardens. The moving spirit which ordained all these things was the will of the Roi Soleil. Parterres and broderies were designed on even a grander scale than before.
Let not one overlook the distinction: On conventional lines it is pretty, dainty and pleasing, but the species lacks the dignified formality of the Italian garden or the ingenious arrangement of the French. Its curves and ovals and circles are annoying after the lignes droites and the right angles and the broderies of the French variety.
Often these gardens, with their parterres and broderies were mere additions to an already existing architectural scheme, but with respect to the gardens of the Luxembourg and Saint Germain-en-Laye they came into being with the edifices themselves, or at least those portions which they were supposed to embellish.
This was the highest development of the French garden up to this time. It is possible that this Claude Mollet was the creator of the parterres and broderies so largely used in his time, and after. Mollet's formula was derived chiefly from flower and plant forms, resembling in design oriental embroideries. He made equal use of the labyrinth and the sunken garden.
In their highest expression these early French gardens, with their broderies and carreaux may well be compared as works of art with contemporary structures in stone or wood or stuffs in woven tapestries, which latter they greatly resembled. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the elaborateness of the French garden was even more an accentuated epitome of the tastes of the period.
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