Monty Don's French Gardens

Episode 1

Gardens of power and passion

58 mins

Monty examines the history and evolution of the gardens of the French powerful and wealthy. His look back begins in the Renaissance and the formal and structured gardens of royalty that looked inward both as privilege and security. This idea exploded in the seventeenth century into what most would consider the stereotype of the formal French garden, that explosion largely in size. The new ideas were to build gardens along a central axis for a grand vista, and to incorporate large water features, often along much of that axis and/or as focal points for the vista. The chief designer of these gardens is André Le Nôtre, and while Versailles is probably the most well known of his gardens of the era, arguably the one most seen are the Tuileries in Paris, the extension of which is the grand boulevard of the Champs d'Elysses currently stretching over five miles through the Arc de Triomphe to La Defense. Monty then looks at the history of the French love of roses which arose from Josephine Bonaparte's love of the flower, she who wanted a collection of every known rose variety in the world at that time. He then looks at what the rich and powerful of modern times are doing in creating gardens, whether they are trying to create something along the scale of those earlier gardens, or if they are limited to the tight urban spaces of inner city Paris. He then concludes with a look at such historic gardens if they are allowed to evolve with modern sensibilities.