Jacques Boyceau, sieur de la Barauderie was a French garden designer, the superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII, whose posthumously produced Traité du iardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l'art. Ensemble divers desseins de parterres, pelouzes, bosquets et autres ornements was published in 1638. Its sixty engravings after Boyceau's designs make it one of the milestones in tracing the history of the Garden à la française. His nephew Jacques de Menours, who produced the volume, included an engraved frontispiece with the portrait of Boyceau.

The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of "landscape" garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts.