wow.. no one? :(

What an interesting house and grounds, if I had bundles of money I'd love to buy it - even if I had to live in France!

I think you're talking about the terraces going up the hill. This is simply an efficient way of gardening on sloped land, which prevents natural erosion of loose soils downhill from rains, which would happen if you tried to run the rows any other direction. In use in places all over the world where people have to grow on hillsides. I don't know enough about French gardens be very helpful, but I suppose you could grow anything you wanted there. I imagine if it's any distance from the house, you'd go for things like grapevines, berry bushes and fruit trees and hardier things that wouldn't need frequent watering. Those you would save for the kitchen garden, close to the house. Can't really tell in the pictures what they have there, but it looks bushy or maybe not even maintained at the present.

how very dreamy. :)

le sigh....

The terracing of the slope certainly predates the gardens by centuries. It is the traditional way of growing olives, vines, citrus etc. on steep rocky hillsides in the South of France (ie it is a French landscape, not 'European') I don't think the owners are actively cultivating the terraces any longer as far as I can see.

The kitchen garden is pleasant but looks like an ordinary vegetable garden divided into rectangular areas. I don't see anything unusual there. You could easily do that in your garden.

Hedges in the UK form boundaries to some fields and some gardens. Many are a result of the enclosures of the 18th century when much common land was taken over by landowners and divided into fields. In some areas where stone is plentiful and the climate is harsher stone walls are used. There is no mystery to hedges. You just plant your plants in a row and keep it cut. Google 'hedge laying' to find out how this was done traditionally. Nowadays farmers use flails attached to tractors and gardeners use shears or powered hedge cutters. Your 'Edwardian' family would not have planted those hedges themselves - they would have been there for at least 2 hundred years by the turn of the 19th century. A well maintained field hedge will live pretty much indefinitely. When I fly in to the UK I can always tell when I am over England by the patchwork of hedges and irregular fields on looking down. It's quite different from the appearance of any other European country.

I notice that the owners are selling up and returning to the UK. Maybe their vision of the good life didn't quite work out after all.

well, as someone who studies early medieval ("Dark Ages") history, we may have different definitions of "old". ;-)

Your configuration would depend greatly on how much room you have, climate, and what your interests are. One source would be to look at monastic garden layouts.. they were the pattern for later private garden layouts. There was a great deal of variability in detail, so don't feel constrained. The Mas Du Diablo gardens are not accurately 12th c, but they have stuck with an old layout.

Large raised beds, often with a shrub or tree in the middle were common for the herb garden (some veggies would be grown there as well.) Gardens would have walls or fences for shelter, "hedges" of grape vines or espaliered fruit trees, & trellised vines. Herb & pleasure gardens were *always* enclosed Blocks, rather than long rows, were more common in the veggie garden than today

Developing from the raised bed layouts were the parterres, formal geometric layouts that became quite overwrought in the late renaissance.

Here's a rather straightforward kitchen garden recreation

http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/culross_palace_re-created_medieval_garden.jpg

a more formal one

http://images.travelpod.com/users/lifeinbrian/1.1270925196.medieval-garden---for-veronica-if-you-re-readi.jpg

What kind of space & climate are you looking at? How interested are you in herbs or the pleasure garden aspect?