A parterre is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of the garden nearest the house, perhaps after a terrace. The view of it from inside the house, especially from the upper floors, was a major consideration in its design. The word "parterre" was and is used both for the whole part of the garden containing parterres and for each individual section between the "alleys".

The pattern or the borders of the beds may be marked by low, tightly pruned, evergreen hedging, and their interiors may be planted with flowers or other plants or filled with mulch or gravel. Parterres need not have any flowers at all, and the originals from the 17th and 18th centuries had far fewer than modern survivals or reconstructions. Statues or small evergreen trees, clipped as pyramids or other shapes, often marked points in the pattern, and an allée of medium-sized trees often ran along the side. Otherwise, the parterre was normally an area of openness, with the various elements very low, contrasting with the height of the house, and the taller areas of the garden beyond. This made the parterre both a place to be seen, as typically everyone walking in the parterre, and observers from around it, could see everyone else, but also a place for the most private conversations, as no one else could approach without being seen. The paths are constituted with gravel or (much less often in historical examples) turf grass.

French parterres developed from the patterned compartments of French Renaissance gardens, what are called in England knot gardens. Later, in the 17th century Baroque garden, they became more elaborate and stylised, on the continent often using the parterre en broderie style of spreading and curving branches, derived from embroidery. The French formal garden parterre inspired many similar parterres throughout Europe, though the parterres in the gardens of Versailles are rather muted; those in palace gardens in the Holy Roman Empire and eventually Russian-controlled eastern Europe, are often more extensive and extravagant.

Parterre-style areas reappeared in many large gardens from the mid-19th century, now much more lavishly planted with bedded-out flowers, and with less strictly geometrical designs. From around the mid-21st century, as interest in Baroque gardens revived, many attempts to recreate or restore Baroque parterres have been made, at least as regards the layout; planting often continues to be much thicker, and the height of hedges higher, than would have been the case in the originals.