The French Garden

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About The French Garden

This group is about the French style or influence in gardening thru out history Please post photos of French style gardens and French garden art from all around the world.

The most elaborate formal French gardens contain pathways, statuary, fountains and beds on differing levels.the best-known example of a formal garden of gravel, stone, water, turf and trees with sculpture is at Versailles, which is actually many different gardens, laid out by André Le Nôtre. In the early eighteenth century, the publication of Dezallier d'Argenville, La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709) was translated into English and German, and was the central document for the later formal gardens of Continental Europe. Formal gardening in the French manner was reintroduced at the turn of the twentieth century: Beatrice Farrand's formal gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC and Achille Duchêne's restored water parterre at Blenheim Palace are examples of the modern formal garden.


At the end of the 18th century, a fashion grew up in France

Anglo-Chinese gardens melt with the greatest care trees, lawns and buildings in Chinese but also Oriental or Greco-Roman style (temples, altars, pavilions ...).

The French "parcs à fabriques" used a lot of small ornamental buildings called fabriques, set up in the park with a philosophical device. Some of them also had a function : icehouses, settlements, sheep-folders, diaries ... A lot of them were built to look like ruins. They were coordinated with rare trees, meadows, greenhouses, rocks and ponds. The whole was designed to improve feelings, manage surprises and create paths.

Born in England, Anglo-Chinese gardens were accepted in Sweden and Germany. The style rose latter in France. But he climaterized there from 1775 to 1790. Then it was sunk by the Révolution. The most famous of the Anglo-Chinese gardens is The Désert de Retz, created from 1774 to 1789 by Monsieur de Monville, and was one of the most famous places at its time. In an altogether banal small valley, he mixed in garden art rare trees with some small buildings (called fabriques) to reach the absolute grace of that time. The important persons of the world went there; it is difficult to imagine today the fame of this garden and the feeling of perfection that it inspired.