But Johnston’s planting style evolved towards ever greater freedom. He gradually introduced a lush profusion which Vita Sackville West much admired: “The plants grow in a jumble, flowering shrubs mixed with Roses, herbaceous plants with bulbous subjects, climbers scrambling over hedges, seedlings coming up wherever they have chosen to sow themselves”. Fragrant plants spilled over paths so that visitors brushed them in passing.

In the thirties, when Hidcote was already a mature garden, Serre was still in its infancy. The countryside was famous for its beauty, and Johnston was able to include it in his plans. His Menton garden covers a steep slope hidden from the road. The villa is halfway up the hill and a fine stone stairway leads straight down from the house to the large pool, five levels below. This T-shaped central axis, reminiscent of the one at Hidcote, lends unity to a complex layout which is otherwise mostly asymmetrical. This is the most architectural and ornate feature of the Garden and is often compared to Italian gardens and the creations of Harold Peto.

On the fringes of the Garden, there was no need to create an artificial wilderness as at Hidcote. It was enough to enrich the existing maquis above the house. One can still find a number of exotic plants there: Canary oaks and pines, evergreen maples, callistemon (bottlebrush), and traces of a vast "Mexican garden" to the west. To the east there subsist traces of the fencing from an aviary, covering an area of roughly three acres, for exotic birds which lived in semi-captivity.

As a "formal setting", Serre offered Johnston a new feature with rich potential, i.e. terracing. Though terraces divide up the terrain like the green rooms at Hidcote, the geometry of English hedges is straight-lined and orderly, whereas the bold lines of Mediterranean "restanques" are never truly parallel. Their dry-stone walls support terraces of constantly varying height and breadth, following the curves of the terrain. They thus constitute an ideal transition from architecture to wilderness.

Terracing also differs from “green rooms” in its balance between shelter and prospect. Both protect from the wind and concentrate sunlight, but a terrace also offers open perspectives in several directions from a single viewpoint. The steep slope of Serre makes visitors experience the garden vertically—whether from the small entrance terraces which look up towards the house, or from the villa’s windows, looking down. Johnston also created plunging perspectives which cut diagonally across the hillside, like that from the wisteria belvevdere. The most intimate corners open onto distant views on the surrounding landscape which, judging from photographs taken in the 1930’s, before more recent building took place, were truly superb.

Anna Pavord remarks that new visitors to Hidcote are sometimes disconcerted by the lack of a single, set route. This is even truer at Serre where the terracing already had multiple points of entry. Various visitors’ accounts show that Johnston led his guests up towards the house by any one of several different paths, according to his whim of the moment. Still today, once engaged in the secret eastern terraces, visitors may hesitate between the two mischievous sphinxes who beckon downhill and the glimmer of a Roman bust at the far end of the peony lane. In Johnston’s time, it must already have been hard to explore all directions in a single visit—and it is still a challenge today.