Garden in a Glance: French Gardens

Buen Retiro had not set an example for nothing. To achieve this end Le Notre seized on one great principle that the whole extent of the enormous garden should be visible at a gasp; accordingly, whatever variety there might be within the parts, the parts themselves were to be subordinated to the whole. If the garden was to be seen at a glance it must be relatively narrow, but as it must be impressive by sheer size it had also to be long; the eye of a man on the uppermost terrace can look on and on into distance, but must not be asked to move from side to side. In this way the vista garden was born, and the small square moated garden developed into an enormous carpet laid from the home terrace into a distance so remote that it seemed a backcloth rather than a reality. There is an air of unreality over all gardens; they are escapist. But the garden at Vaux-le-Vicomte had the particular unreality of the theatre; its major coherent purpose was to stun not to charm. Nevertheless within the limits of the great design there was room for many subordinate ones and it was in these that fancy was allowed to play and produce a longed-for variety. Le Notre was praised by Madame de Scudery for hitting upon the idea of leaving at Vaux-le-Vicomte a wood on either wing of the central chain of parterres. But it was not a new idea, for we have seen it at Monceaux and at Richelieu. The chief purpose of these groves was to help to frame the vista, to carry the eye forward and forbid it to roam from side to side; their secondary purpose was as a background for fountains or statuary; their third was to contain other small gardens upon which one would come with delighted surprise and which, screened from the central stage by the trees, provided ideal `little' theatres within which elaborate temporary works could be produced in secret to startle and amaze their selected public. These are the logical descendants of the Italian giardini secret, and have something of the aura of sacred groves. It is tempting to see in the garden at Vaux and those that followed it a close reflection of the spirit of the age.