Royal Palaces and Parks of France

th centuries, and, for the most part, those of to-day and of later decades of the

heir highest expression these early French gardens, with their broderies and carreaux may well be compared as works of

nth century a marked deterioration was noticeable and a separation of the tastes which ordained the arrangement of contemporary dwellings and their gardens was v

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ld-time parterres came again into being, and to them were attached composite elements or motives, whi

re an old dwelling of the period of Henri IV, Fran?ois I, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, or Louis XV still exists with its garden, the latter is more often than

ssed its own specious variety of garden; a species which responded sufficiently t

-age, of the epoch of the Crusades, for example, did not bear the least resemblance to the more ample parterres of the Renaissance. Civilizati

he Renaissance seed. Regretfully, one cannot say as much for the garden plots of the eighteenth century, and it was only with the mid-nineteenth

es, or carreaux, were often laid out in foliage and blossoming plants as suggestive as possible of their being made of carpeting or marble. When the

utlines. By this time, the garden in France had become a frame which set off the architectural charms of the dwelling rather than remaining a mere accessory, but it

pments, or adaptations, of Italian gardens, such as were desi

all other luxuries, were given little thought when the graver questions of peace and security were to be consid

h were usually surrounded by the cloister colonnade. One of the most important of these, of which history makes mention, was that of the Abbaye

ell. From these one can make a very good deduction of what the garden of that day was like; still restrained, but ye

ted extent, chiefly laid out in tiny carreaux, or beds, bordered by tiles or bricks, much as a small city garden is arranged to-day. Here

enerous sprinkling of flowers and aromatic plants. The verger was always outside the walls,

, that in times of peace the seigneur and his fami

s vieng en

ur pour s'

undred or more tales of chivalry in verse, which are reco

ad preserved the antique custom of the coiffure of flowers, that is to say hats of natural flowers, as we might call them to-day, except tha

n an Old F

ate, not the highly cultivated product of to-day. From the ballads and the love songs, one gathers that there were also

who embroidered it on their handkerchiefs and their girdles. Still other flowers found a place in th

ral pretense, with towers and accessories conforming to the style of the period, and

ective. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, perspective was almost wholly ignored in pictorial records. There was often no scale, and no depth; every

ntury and the early years of the fourteenth; continuing the tradition, remained distinctly French until the mid-fifteenth century, for

influences. Before, as there were primitives in the art of painting in France, there were certainly French gardeners in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of these, whoever he may have been, was the designer of the pre

s in detail, and so numerous are certain of them that it would

X Sols" for repairing the grass-plots and for making a petit preau. Again: "XI Sols" for the e

xception princely houses set out to rival one another in the splendour of their surroundings. Now came in the ornamental garden as distinct from th

the words preau, pré and prairie were evolved naturally enough, and came thus early to be applied in France to that portion of the ple

isan, who wrote "The Life of Charles V,

grand large

, et, afin qu

, ou milie

sans

en my un trè

c architecture, that France was at the head of European civilization,

a rivulet passing through it, a spring, a pine tree giving a

oundings and framing his chateaux, manors and country-seats in dignified and most appealing pictures. Grass-plots appeared in door

ini, the master of Dante, who had sought a refuge in France, w

ntury. Practically the gloriette, a word in common use in northern France and in Flanders, was a logette de plaisanc

hed with vines and often perched upon a natural or artificial eminence. Other fast developing details of the Fre

edy development of these details, and played parts of consid

gardens of the Louvre under Charles V concerning the contribution of one,

riter of the fifteenth century. From the "Ménagier de Paris," a work of the end of the fourteenth century, one learns that behind a dwelling of a prince or noble of the t

he moyen-age the paths which separated the garden plots were very narrow; in the early Renais

h he propagated so widely promptly rejected these grotesques, which, for a fact, were an importation from Flanders, like the gloriettes. Not by the remotest suggestion could a clipped yew in the form of a peacock or a giraffe be called Fre

ugh of Italian inspiration in the first instance, were actually the work of Italian craftsmen. Pucello Marceliano at four hundred livres and Edme Marceliano at two hundred livres were in the employ of Henri II. It was the former who laid out the magnif

de Diane,"

dins de plaisance, jardins de propreté, etc. Parterres now became of two sorts, parterres à co

ote, and acquired an extensive clientele for his flowers and models. Often these gardens, with their parterres and broderies were mere additions to an already existing architectural scheme, but with respect to the gardens of the Luxembourg and Saint Germain-en-Laye they came into being with the edifices them

Villers-Cotterets and Fontainebleau. These are rather parks, like the "home-parks," so called, in England, which, while adjuncts to the dwellings, are complete in themselves and are possessed of a separate identity, or reason for being. Chiefly these, and indeed most French gardens of the same epoch, differ

f the Chateau d'Anet while it was occupied by Diane de Poitiers, and for their time they were considered the most celebrated in France

e of the labyrinth and the sunken garden. His idea was to develop the simple parquet into the elaborate parterre. He began his career under Henri III and ultimately became the gardener of Henri IV. His elaborate work "Theatre des Plans et Jardinage" wa

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he two Mollets, the brothers Boyceau, de la Barauderie and Jacques de Menours,

e here found on a more ambitious scale than in any of the private gardens of the nobility. The central avenue was always of the most

conventional quincunx; others were mere expanses of lawn, and still others had flowers arranged in symmetrical patterns. In one of these squares was a design which showed the escutcheons of the arms of France and those of the Médici. These gardens of the Tuileries were first modified by a project of Bernard Palissy, the porcelainiste. He let his fancy have full sway and the criss-cross alleys and avenues were set out at their junctures with moulded ornaments, enamelled miniatures, turtles in faience and frogs in porcelain. It was this, perhaps,

art

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Renaissance, but bordered frequently with representations of designs taken from Venetian lace and various other contemporary stuffs. There were other parterres, where the compartments were planned on a more utilitarian scale; in other words, they were the potagers which r

remarkable an example of the terrace garden as was to be found in France, the terraces ris

form of square, round or octagonal pavilions, and here and there were added considerable areas of tiled p

nd of hedges shoulder high, or even taller, and the third was practically a roofed-over grove. The latter invention was due, it is said, to the discreet Louis XIV. In the T

imes called the "Road of Jerusalem" an

nd that of the Chateau de Meudon, built by Philibert Delorme, of which Ronsard celebrated its beauties in verse. The art was not confined to the gardens of royalties and the nobility, for the bourgeoisie speedily took up with

e was less fear for the artistic effect of great open spaces than had formerly existed, and the avenues and alleys were considerably enlarged, and such architectural and sculptural accessories as fountains, balustrades and perrons were designed o

of the coming into being of th

effect is no less to be remarked upon than the character of their gardens. Th

e. They were frequently grouped into four equal parts with a circular ba

eloped to high order, and there were groves, rest-houses, bowers, and theatres de verdure at each turning. Tennis-courts came to be a regularly installed accessory, and the basins and "mirrors" of water were frequently supplemente

cism. It is this criticism that qualifies the values of such gardens as those of Versailles and Vaux, but one must admit that the scale on which they were planned has much to

was now to be considered a taste for something smaller, but often overcrowded with accessories of the same nature, whi

ion of an undeniable grace by an affected mannerism. All the rococco details which had been applied to architecture no

e of Louis XVI which was to come. There was, too, at this time a disposition towards the English garden, but only a slight tendency, though towards 1780 the conv

la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance," by Blondel (1773), his "Cours d'Architecture"

ng quite apart from the dwelling, and was but a diminutive dooryard sort of a garden. The garden of the Renaissance amplified the regul

ed less the lines of traditional good taste. Shapes and forms were complicated and indeed inexplicably mixed into a mélange that one could hardly recognize for one thing or another, certainly not as examples of any well-meaning styles which have lasted until to-day. The strai

something more simple and more

f the Petit Trianon, an addition to the garden which Louis XIV had given to the Grand Trianon. By c

m Holland and Belgium and from England even; features which got no great hold, however,

es as varied and complicated as those of the Vale of Cashmere, and again, with tiny stars and crescents and what not, the ground resembled an ornamental ceiling more than it did a garden. The sentimentalism of the epoch did its part, and accentuated the desire to carry out personal tastes rather than build on traditionally acce

lines of the best work of the seventeenth century, and succeeded admirably in a small way in resuscitating the fallen taste. Isabey's gardens may have lacked much that was rem

king in Paris itself. It was then that the parks and squares came really

rc Monceau and that of the Buttes Chaumont of to-day, the descendants of these firs

ng the best of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century work, which had endured without the competition of later years having

their details and their rainbow colours, as any since the time of Louis XVI. According to the expert definition the jardin fleuriste was a "garden reserved

reunions in which took part such a brilliant array of lords and ladies of the court as

rd and robes of silk and velvet and gilded carriages and chaises-à-porteurs, had little in common with the out-of-door garden-party life of to-day, where the guests arrive in automobiles, be-rugged and be-goggled and somewhat the wors

Couronne, V

tyle, is usually but an adjunct to the modern chateau, villa or cottage. It is more intimate than the vast, more theatrically d