Fashion cycles through gardens the way it does through kitchens, but the formal garden has outlasted every trend since Versailles for one reason: clipped green geometry flatters absolutely any house, from Federation to brand-new build. It's also — whisper it — one of the easiest styles to get right, because the design is just lines and repetition.
The idea
Formality is structure made visible: hedges as walls, standards as columns, symmetry as rhythm. The palette is deliberately tiny — two box varieties, one feature tree repeated, perfume at the thresholds — because restraint is the style. If you can string a line and count to two, you can build this garden.
The palette
The frame: Japanese Box for main parterre lines, English Box for the tighter inner details. Japanese box grows faster and takes Australian heat better; English box holds the crispest miniature edges. Together they give the two-tone green geometry the whole style rests on. Use the hedge calculator at 30 cm spacing to size each run.
The columns: matched Teddy Bear Magnolias and a pair of Upright Olives. Evergreen verticals that hold their form — magnolias where you want gloss and mass, olives where you want that silver Mediterranean restraint.
The thresholds: Gardenias at gates and steps. Formal gardens risk feeling cold; perfume at every pause point is the classic correction.
The green walls: Star Jasmine, clipped flat on fences. Espaliered jasmine panels read as living wallpaper and complete the outdoor-room illusion.
How to plant it
String lines are non-negotiable — every hedge, dead straight or a deliberate curve, never almost-straight. Plant box slightly closer than feels right (30 cm) for a fast knit. Clip little and often from the first year; two light trims a season keeps edges sharp with ten minutes' work. Symmetry does the rest, permanently.
Good to know
This is the dressed-up sibling of the welcoming front garden; for structure without the clipping, see the lower-maintenance garden. All the raw material lives in hedging plants — and the pack below prices the full parterre at today's rates.