French Formal Garden

What is the ultimate theme of the French formal garden?
It uses carefully sculpted vegetation, planted in straight lines, as organic architecture. This emphasizes man’s dominance over nature through a strict control of all plant material. The disciplined symmetry of this form is precise in its planning and layout, and runs along long axes that inspire the viewer with a sense of sublime infinity.

What type of house does this garden work best with?
Historically, French formal gardens were built beneath a terrace that allowed the visitor to overlook the entire garden. If a terrace was absent, the garden would be viewed from either the top of a wall or a large window that provided sufficient overlook.

This approach can easily be modified to our contemporary location because the French countryside is remarkable similar to the flat terrain of the Houston landscape. French forms can be developed here in much the same way, with the intended vantage point for the garden being a balcony or second story window overlooking the parterres and axes of the garden.

Where on the property do you normally install a French formal garden?
The French formal garden uses the home itself as the garden focal point. Trees are planted away from the home to give it special emphasis. Low parterres and trimmed bushes closer to the home help distinguish it further.

The garden is built around a central access that is perpendicular to the house. Normally this runs opposite the front entrance and moves toward either a horizon point or a classical statue. The main axis is most often made of gravel and is edged by trees. Perpendicular axes cross the main axes to provide aesthetic balance and human transit points.

What types of geometry does this garden style use?
The most sophisticated parterres are square, circular, oval, or scroll-like in shape. They are juxtaposed against the home in such a manner as to compliment the architectural motifs that distinguish its build out. The parterres near the residence are normally created with low boxwoods that hug the ground. As the linear movement of the French formal garden progresses away from the home façade, the hedges rise proportionally. Trees may be planted in larger gardens to enhance the sense of heightened perspective and drama.

Does the French formal garden use water features at all?
Yes. In fact, water features are among its most important elements. Canals, basins, custom fountains, and waterfalls lend not only a touch or elegance, but also have a mirror-like effect that makes the garden appear larger than it actually is.

What types of decorations does the French garden use?
To further emphasize the theme of order, system, and human dominion, classical sculpture is used in the garden to establish Greco-Roman or mythological aesthetics. Sculpture is normally placed at the intersections of axes or by water features.

Small Gardens

Why should I consider a small garden?
If you do not have a lot of space around your home because you live on a small lot, this form of garden design creates interest and variety regardless of your actual square footage. It is a particularly useful form around townhomes and patio homes.

Many people with Italian style two story homes also like this form because it is an excellent way to decorate a balcony.

Where are small gardens normally planted?
They can be planted near any form in a yard. Their primary purpose is to accent another form. Examples include gazebos, summer kitchens, architectural walls, small arbors, and iron gates. Adding a small garden to any of these places brings color, dimension, and a sense of organic framing to the scene.

What plants are best to use for this form?
We choose plants whose color, sizes, shapes, and textures create an illusion of enlarged space. One technique we heavily rely upon is to use several different shades of green. This layers the design and keeps it from looking like a monotone patch. In most cases as well, we use more than one color of flowering plant for the same reason.

Do you use exclusively small plants?
No. The actual size of the plants themselves will vary based on where the garden is planted. If we are installing plants near a very tall wall, for example, we want to use something that will compliment the vertical impact of the structure. On the other hand, if we are lining the circumference and radiuses of a small circular courtyard patio, we want to create a border around the hardscape that will enhance its appearance without overpowering its appeal.

How can illusions be used?
Small garden design is all about illusion when you think about it. This is especially true in contemporary garden design where the avant garde is the norm and anything normal is challenged or diminished. Gardens here have more inorganic elements like stone, white walls, black rocks, mirrors, decorative glass, and even stainless steel. Minimalist plantings of greenery then create a complex interplay between non-living and living elements that challenges one’s ideas about what life itself is and the true nature of thought and its place in man’s evolution.

Is water an important part of small garden design?
It often is. The morning garden fountain, for example, is an excellent form to add to any landscape as a private island of tranquility or meditation. The amount of vegetation needed here does not have to be very much at all. It is best to use multiple shades of green to prevent the sense of monotony, but the colors of the flowers can be singular if that contributes to the design and size of the fountain itself.

Can small gardens be planted within a patio itself?
Yes. Any style of patio can have a portion of its surface removed to work as a planting area. In contemporary gardens, dark green bushes or small trees bordered by gravel are popular. In more traditional forms, everything from special grasses to tropical plants are frequently used.

French Courtyard on the Far Edge of the Greater Houston Landscape

There was a man with an Arabian horse farm located in New Ulm, Texas—a town not too far from the outskirts of Houston. This man is known throughout the world, and clients often visit his estate to buy the horses he breeds. He asked us to build a French courtyard from which he and his clients could overlook the horses grazing in the prairie on the south side of the hill, and offer a magnificent view of the Greater Houston landscape from the east side of the hill.

The genius of this French courtyard is that it is actually two courtyards in one. The courtyards are slightly separated from one another and connected by a limestone pathway that bisects the center of both sections and runs back to the house. A formal vegetable grows along one section, and on the side of the other section, the hill drops down to the valley below where the horses graze. The first section offers a seating area near a fountain built into a wall. The second section is actually the part of the courtyard that offers the view of the valley of horses from one angle, and the distant Houston landscape from the other.

This section is built with conversation and comfort. The sale of horses is the nature of the homeowner’s business, so the most magnificent view of the herd—and the opportunity to discuss their magnificence—is a very subtle, and also very powerful, tool of business.

The design of this seating area is deliberately austere. Although the property is technically part of the geographic outskirts of the greater Houston landscape, we did NOT want to generate the energy of a hard-driven business deal like parts of the city itself are known for.

Instead, we wanted the 18th Century look and feel of limestone chip walkways and an antique table and chair set in the center of an outdoor patio. We further expanded this historical theme by decorating the patio with an antique table and chair set that established a very strong Old World feeling more apropos to discussing the finer things in life.

Among the more notable features in this French courtyard are its skillful blend of contrasting shades of light and dark colors, and the view it offers visitors of the Greater Houston landscape and the beginnings of the Texas Post Oak Belt.

This creates a very strong feeling of order, symmetry, and vast convergence that balances all of the many organic and inorganic elements of the surrounding garden. It provides an ideal aesthetic environment to host either a formal – yet simultaneously relaxed business dinner. The owner can also use the courtyard to close friends and relatives who drop by to chat for a few hours in the beauty of the garden.

Since 1987, Exterior Worlds has specialized in developing custom projects such as this one many of the finest properties found throughout the Greater Houston area and landscape.

Houston Landscape Design with French Elements

A couple by the name of Claire and Dan Boyles commissioned Exterior Worlds to create a Houston landscape design based upon French themes and forms. The Boyles home was built in Colonial French style, with Claire having been very involved in the planning and development of its architecture. She wanted to make the surrounding property appear as those a portion of France had been lifted out of Europe and integrated into the indigenous forms and vegetation of the Houston landscape.

This design was not technically a formal French country garden. Instead, it used the essential elements of this style to transform the immediate Houston landscape around the home into the symmetry, color, and sense of formality associated with this French aesthetics. One of the more notable features we used to accomplish this was a custom swimming pool, fashioned according to the principles of linearity, complimentary right angles, and a luxury spa and pool fountain. We also added French pottery in various locations around the patio to balance the stonework against the look and structure of the home.

We then planted a formal garden parallel to the linear movement pool to reflect its. Similar to larger French country gardens, this garden is bordered by sheered bushes and emphasizes straight lines, angles, and symmetry. Its most distinguishing feature is that it consists entirely of various shades of green, which supports the feeling of a French estate embedded in an exclusive and private portion of the HOUSTON LANDSCAPE.

Just around the corner from the home’s back entrance stand a double-door entrance to the master bedroom. It is here that we built the Boyles a small patio to use as a private seating area. We deviated slightly from the strict linearity and symmetry of adjoining elements by adding pavers that ran out like steps from the patio into the grass. We planted boxwood hedges around the patio, which are common to French country garden design and further contribute to the sense of an Old World morning garden setting.

To further accentuate the patio, we added pavers that ran like steps from the seating area into the grass. We also planted rosemary and mondo as ground cover in the spaces between the patio, the corner of the house, and the back wall that borders this portion of the yard.

We then landscaped the front of the home with a grand sense of entrance by building a stone walkway that ran from the sidewalk to the front of the house, and then diverged in right angles to run parallel to the covered front porch. We also added a small parterre garden to the left side of the porch to mirror the home’s French colonial design

French country garden design is traditionally viewed as a very formal style intended to completely fill the entirety of a vast estate. The genius of the Boyles project lay not in strict adherence to tradition, but rather in adapting its basic principles to the architecture of the home and the local topography of the surrounding HOUSTON LANDSCAPE.

For more the 20 years Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston's fine neighborhoods.

Garden Landscape Design

The first thing we do in developing a garden landscape design is select the best location for a garden. We look for an area that will appear complimentary to the home from multiple points of view, so that regardless of whether you are looking at the garden from your living room window, or admiring it from the patio of your custom swimming pool, the garden will add a unique and special vitality to the moment. Such locations often include the bases of fountains, areas around outdoor buildings, patios, fences, and masonry. Many of the larger, more formal garden designs like Parterre gardens can even center an entire landscape, serving as organic focal point around which all other landscape design features are designed.

The actual style chosen for a particular garden landscape design is based on two factors: geometry and intended theme. Because any house occupies the position of central importance on the property, it is necessary to begin every residential landscape project with a systematic architectural analysis. No matter how eclectic a house looks, its architecture is based on the same basic geometric forms seen in every other structure. It is only the manner in how these forms are combined that determines uniqueness. Our garden landscape design professionals pinpoint these forms and plant vegetation in corresponding patterns. These forms will either directly reflect architectural geometry, or they will compliment it with correlative counterpunctual designs.

Another consideration that weighs heavily in our choice of style is the theme of the landscape master plan. If we are looking to create an abstract, conceptual aesthetic, we will plant a contemporary or modern garden. If we want to create a sense of meditative repose, we can build a Zen garden or Japanese water garden. Formalism is best developed through traditional garden designs, such as French, Italian, and English Gardens. Mediterranean and Tropical gardens can be planted if we want to create an atmosphere of the romantic or the exotic. Custom gardens that are comprised of blended elements from all styles can work to establish a strong eclectic tone in the landscape.

The heart and soul of garden landscape design are the plants and flowers growing within the garden. Every design, regardless of origin, depends upon a blended presentation of greenery and color. Different shades of green must be used in order to avoid looking flat and two dimensional. A layering of lighter shades of green with darker tones creates a much deeper, more multi-dimensional perspective. Different shrub species, ground cover plants, and special types of grass our use to create these layers of shade and tone that range from an almost lime-green to a dark green that almost looks black in certain light levels.

Once this foundation of green is laid, color is then be added in appropriate amounts, depending on the style of garden we are developing. There are a few designs, such as the Parterre Garden, that use practically no flowering plants at all. Others styles like knot gardens feature a plethora of herbs that flower seasonally and add a different spectrum to the yard every 3-6 months. Still other forms like French, Italian, and especially tropical gardens, allow for a much more creative and liberal use of color.

French Courtyard Garden Design

Earlier this year, Exterior Worlds was contacted by the owner of an Arabian horse farm located in New Ulm, Texas, just outside of Houston proper. This man is known throughout the world, and clients visit his estate frequently to buy the horses he is famous for breeding. He wanted to create a special vantage point that would better help his clients get a better view of the horses that they travelled so far to consider buying. After consulting with him, we all agreed that the best addition to his property would be a two-section a French courtyard that would create a relaxed state of mind on the one hand, and offer a magnificent view of the landscape and the horses on the other. Since his home sits atop a hill that overlooks the prairie where the horses run, such a setting would be ideal for both personal visits and business negotiations with travelling clients.

The genius of this French courtyard design lies in the fact that it is actually two courtyards in one. The courtyards are slightly from one another, but are connected by a limestone pathway that bisects the center of both sections and runs all the way to the back of the home. A formal vegetable garden lies just to one side of one section, and the side of the hill drops down to the valley below just to the side of the other section.

We designed the first section of the French Courtyard with tranquility and contemplation in mind. To give the area a sense of repose and formal seating, we built two stone benches on either side of the gravel walkway, and built a limestone wall on the far end as a terminus for the entire structure. We installed a wall fountain in this location constructed from an antique spout and an antique limestone trough. The fountain is operated by a silent, remote pump that masks its mechanical nature and allows visitors to only hear the soothing sounds of the flowing water. This creates an aura of serenity for people sitting to either side of the fountain, and adds to the aesthetic of the formal vegetable garden that lies just to one side of the structure.

We then built the second section of the French courtyard conversation and comfort foremost in mind. Because the owner makes his living by selling Arabian horses, a view of his magnificent herd is crucial to the success of his business cycle. This was the primary motivation for building this portion of the courtyard as an observation point that would allow for a scenic overlook of the herds grazing below, and discussion of the attributes and value of each horse in the herd. We wanted these negotiations to flow more like conversation than hard-driven business deals, so we deliberately created a very austere setting for the host to entertain his guests. The patio was not paved, but rather built out of limestone chips identical to those used in 18th Century French gardens. We further expanded this historical theme by decorating the patio with an antique table and chair set that established a very strong Old World sensibility that was strongly suited to the discussion of the finer things in life.

Both parts of the French Courtyard are enclosed by an iron fence that creates a sense of seclusion and separation from the stress factors of the outside world. We wanted to magnify this sense of spatial separation with a separation for time as well, so we decided to make the fencing appear antique to match the furniture. We used some special painting methods to color the panels, and then let them rust a bit to make them mimic 18th Century ironwork. We also added some of the organic basics of French garden design to the courtyard by planting boxwoods and clipped hedges around the fence, patio, and stonework.

Among the more notable features in this French courtyard are its skillful blend of contrasting shades of light and dark colors, and the multiple points of view it offers both visiting clients and friends. The limestone path that bisects the two portions of the enclosure is made from a much darker color of limestone than the surrounding patio limestone. This lends a very strong feeling of symmetry that balances all of the many organic and inorganic elements of the surrounding garden, and provides an ideal aesthetic environment to host either a formal (albeit, very relaxed business meeting), or to entertain a few close friends and relative who drop by to chat for a few hours in the beauty of the garden.

French Country Garden Design

A couple by the name of Claire and Dan Boyles commissioned Exterior Worlds to landscape their back yard with a French Country Garden Design theme. The design we ultimately developed for them was not a traditional French country garden per se, but was rather a derivative of the symmetry and color scheme associated with this style.

The most notable feature of the design was the custom swimming pool we installed just to the rear of the home. It featured linear movement, right angles, and a luxury spa and pool fountain. We used limestone for the pool coping, and we built the custom pool patio using concrete pavers. In various locations around the patio and yard, we also added French pottery to balance the stonework against the structure of the home.

We planted a formal garden parallel to the pool to support its linear movement. Like most French country gardens, it is bordered by sheered bushes and emphasizes linear movement, angles, and symmetrical structure. The interesting thing about this garden is that it is completely green, with no other colors. It is bordered by a taupe colored cedar fence that blends with the stonework.

Around the corner from the back entrance to the home lies a double door entrance to the master bedroom. Here, we built a small patio just beyond the threshold of the door. Along the walls of the home on either side of the glass windows, and between the patio itself, we planted boxwood hedges. Boxwood species are typically used in French country garden and provide an excellent organic frame for the patio.

We deviated slightly from the strict linear forms and emphasis on symmetry in this location by adding pavers that ran out like steps from the patio into the grass. We also added rosemary and mondo grass as ground cover to the space between the patio, the corner of the house, and the back wall that frames the yard. This design is derivative of those found in morning gardens, and it provides the Boyles with a place where they can step directly from their bedroom into a private outdoor space and enjoy the early mornings and evenings.

We also landscaped the front of the Boyles’s house with a symmetrical design consistent with that of French country gardens. We began by creating a sense of entryway by adding a stone walkway that ran straight to the front of the home and extended on either side into an entry patio. The home has a covered porch area in the very front that extends slightly outward from the rest of the house. Along the left wall of the home, to further the connotations of a French country estate, we planted a small parterre garden that can be seen and enjoyed from the porch.

On the other side of home, we built a circular drive motorcourt around a large oak tree. We used special tree preservation techniques to design this motorcourt in order to keep the pavement above the root zone of the tree. The interesting thing about this motorcourt is its color. It features a colored, concrete-acid finish that compliments the brick in the home. We used limestone gravel chips for the parking area. We then planted San Augustine grass around the oak tree to create a sense of organic vitality year round.

Garden Design Plans

The best garden design plans can be developed with the assistance of a professional landscaping contractor who has formal training in botany and landscape design. Gardens are vital components to every landscape. They contribute much more than color and greenery to your property. When designed under the global view of a landscaping master plan, gardens will accomplish a number of things for your property that will increase its sense of dimension and vitality.

One of the things that set apart Exterior Worlds is our emphasis on creating garden design plans that directly reflect the architecture of the home. We have found that this is often a much neglected ingredient of garden design. When people look at your yard for the first time, they view the entire property as a unity. First, they notice the home as the largest and tallest structure on the lot. The mind quickly takes in any architectural structural characteristics and unconsciously expects to see certain themes repeated as the eye descends into the surrounding greenery. A garden that is designed around the same basic geometric patterns and linear movements of a home itself will create a much better sense of harmony and unity throughout the landscape.

Gardens are also key contributors to a sense of life and growth throughout the landscape. Outdoor areas must be segregated for specific purposes, and outdoor structures like swimming pools, patios, play areas, sports courts, outdoor kitchens, and patio seating areas have to be constructed by experienced specialists. Such structures are often very complex and lack any semblance of life in and of themselves. This is where a professionally developed garden design can play such a crucial role in the aesthetic of your property. It will add a feeling of vibrant color, warmth, and growth to any exterior structure and make outdoor décor appear more multi-dimensional.

Garden design plans can also be used to establish motion and progression throughout the landscape. We often plant gardens near motor courts and front walkways that run parallel to concrete and brick work. Plant material can be chosen whose natural growth patterns assist in moving the eye along the chosen pathway. Traditional French and Italian gardens are two good examples of garden designs whose forms connote a symmetry and linear progression that is very useful to this purpose. Other garden designs, such as the parterre garden, are actually planted around pathways that are intended for people to stroll through.

On the other hand, you may want to depart from motion and establish a quiet space where peace of mind replaces linear progression. If such is the case, consider a Japanese garden, traditional Zen garden, and or a morning gardens for a private mediation or reading area. Such a design plan can be developed in any yard that creates a separate, private space for an individual or a couple to disconnect from the stress of the surrounding world and quietly enjoy time alone. If you want a garden like this we strongly recommend you hire an expert to design it, because something intended as an ideal environment will need to be carefully planned and cultivated with the very best plant materials and soil nutrients to ensure a lasting and satisfactory outcome.

If you are interested in landscape design services, Exterior Worlds has been providing the high-end garden design services discussed above for the Houston and the surrounding areas including the Memorial Villages (Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village, Hunter Creek Village), Tanglewood, River Oaks, West University and the greater Houston (Hou), area since 1987.

French Garden Design

French garden design applies the principles of symmetry and geometry established by André Le Nôtre, chief gardener for Louis IVX at the Palace of Versailles. Versailles had originally been a hunting lodge, but Le Nôtre turned it into the envy of the European Elite with his elaborate parterres, radiating pathways, water pools, and stone coping that were laid out with an order and system that all came together into a complex, interconnected unity when viewed from a balcony or palace room. Soon, this style was copied by the remainder of the French aristocracy, and it to this day still follows the same basic design principles as its royal prototype.

Of course, today’s French gardens are obviously much smaller than the ones built around the chateaus of the 18th century. The typical Houston home resides on far less land than even a small European estate. Nevertheless modified derivatives of the original formula can still be replicated in virtually any Houston setting to the flat nature of our terrain. This is because Houston, like much of France, lies on a very level plane that is ideal for the type of formal bedding the garden is planted within.

The essential elements of parterres surrounded by trimmed hedges, repeating geometry, and embroidered patterns are used as compliments to landscaping features such as fountains, patios, and outdoor sculptures. Within these basic structures a tremendous freedom now exists for the landscape designer to create all sorts of shapes and colors within the formal bedding and enclosed low-level hedges that have remained characteristic of this form for centuries.

While French gardens will always be exquisitely breathtaking when appreciated from a removed, elevated vantage point, today’s modern landscaping techniques make it possible to create the same effects with smaller gardens, or even micro gardens, viewed from ground level. Such smaller French gardens are often located in front of outdoor patios, outdoor rooms, and arbors. This allows homeowners to sit outside and overlook a landscape whose diversity also represents unity and balance.

This bending, rather than breaking, of pattern and form allows for virtually any low-level plant species to be used in a French garden. Boxwoods are typically used to frame the edges of parterres, with perennial blooms, herbs, and special grasses comprising the interior. Color choices can range from the monochromatic to a diversity of red, blues, yellows, and varying shades of green.

The only requirement that really limits plant material options is the need of every French garden to clearly have more horizontal space than vertical space. So long as the formal element of a flat, cultivated, and highly sculpted planting remains clearly seen from any desired vantage point(s) , the options for flowers and plants are diverse and numerous.