• The meaning

The forms of the garden had a specific significance – they represented the well-ordered hierarchical universe, with combinations of the different flower-beds and of the various levels of the terraces; the significance depended on the idea that each element in the world had a meaning since the world was emblematic, like a book to be deciphered.

Emblem books (symbolic illustrations of a moral truth: see question) frequently used images of gardens in a figurative sense.