Park and Garden of France

André Le Nôtre, (born March 12, 1613, Paris, France—died Sept. 15, 1700, Paris), one of the greatest French landscape architects, his masterpiece being the gardens of Versailles.

Le Nôtre grew up in an atmosphere of technical expertise; his father, Jean Le Nôtre, was the master gardener of King Louis XIII at the Tuileries. At the studio of painter François Vouet he studied the laws of perspective and optics, which he meticulously followed in his plans, and from François Mansart, uncle of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the principal architect of Versailles, he learned the principles of architecture.

The parks which Le Notre designed at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles are the supreme examples of the French seventeenth century style of garden design. Le Notre also projected the central axis of the Tuileries, which became the grand axis of Paris running to the Arc de Triomphe and La Defense. The designer enjoyed a warm relationship with his patron Louis XIV. Both were men of taste with a passion for gardens and architecture. The baroque style of garden design, which they brought to a crescendo, became widely influential in Europe and beyond the wider world. Every prince and potentate dreamed of owning a garden which would 'outshine Versailles'. This ambition resulted in vast works, though few were executed with a fraction of Le Notre's excellent design judgement.

Le Nôtre’s original goal was to design a formal garden that remained the same throughout the seasons, and he achieved this with large, dramatic parterres framed with low boxwood hedges, wide pebble alleys, statues, fountains, basins, grottoes, and a canal. He played with symmetry, scale, and perspective, using a technique called anamorphosis abscondita (“hidden distortion”) to create a sweeping view from the château’s Terrace de Diane that makes the garden appear longer and larger than it actually is.