Les Jardins Bourgeois

(Bourgeois Gardens)

The rise of the French garden as a bourgeois pastime came about slowly, starting in the early-17th century and gaining popularity throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It has been said that the influence of the French garden would continue on to dominate the rest of Europe with the stamp of French culture and aesthetic ideals in a way that political ambitions, and the armies of Louis XIV, were never able to impose.

However, at home, in Paris, the French garden was loved for simpler reasons. The beauty and simplicity of nature, coupled with its increasingly touted health benefits founded the French garden as an ideal place for bourgeois socializing. The overall appeal of the French garden to the bourgeois was the goal of a Rousseau-inspired escape to nature, while one remained in Paris. In The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in 19th Century France, Nicholas Green quotes Jules Simon as having reminisced on how "in certain corners of the Luxembourg garden you could almost believe yourself in the countryside. There was nothing more delicious, after a wearying day, than to find yourself hidden among these great trees, to forget Paris in the center of Paris, to smell the invigorating scents of earth and vegetation." The attempts to achieve this sense of escape from the city into the countryside can be seen in the many aspects that constitute a French garden.

Two very popular aspects of French gardens were aviaries and menageries. The inclusion of these aspects in private gardens was a statement of wealth, as well as an easy was to entertain guests. In the garden of Tuileries, Marie de Medici kept an aviary near the amphitheater. Here the bird's cages were covered with branches so that visitors could be entertained by the bird concert while enjoying the illusion of being in a wild forest. Since zoos were not yet a formal institution in 17th century France, many menageries contained wild and exotic animals. In the 17th century Versailles contained a menagerie so large that it included apartments and a salon in the middle where nobles could enjoy the solitude of the countryside.

Another very important aspect of French gardens was water. The theory of the French garden was the formal subordination of nature to reason and order with a simultaneous romantic awareness of nature's freedom. Water was the perfect metaphor for this practice. Architects could alter the flow of water and could manipulate it in the form of fountains and pools, however, water always maintained a certain level of freedom with the light and images it reflected. These reflections also played into the idea of French gardens as a step out of reality and into an almost dream-like atmosphere. Water was also important because it was another display of wealth, as pumping devices and construction of fountains were costly endeavors. In August of 1668 the Grand Fete was presented over a number of days in the garden of Versailles. Daily water displays consumed more water per day than the pumps of Samaritaine delivered to the entire population of Paris, approximately 600,000 people.

Although there were many famous garden architects throughout the centuries, the most interesting and important aspect of French gardens was their eclectic atmosphere. Famous gardens, such as Versailles and Chantilly were created over many decades and under the direction of many architects. Often areas of gardens were created for special events such as celebrating a victory or entertaining an auspicious guest. One book noted that "the growth of the King's power can be charted by the growing number of acres added to the gardens and parks and the annual increase in the daily water consumption of each group of new fountains." This practice also added to the overall theme of French gardens, the balance of man and nature. The gardens were never perfectly symmetrical nor were a garden's plans ever entirely finished.