OLIVIER DE SERRES 6i 



Mollet, Jardinier de sa Majeste, a fait preuve de sa dexterite.^ — 

 Le Theatre (T Agriculture. 1600. 



1 Claude Mollet, Head Gardener to Henri IV. and Louis XHI, — predecessor 

 of Le Notre and de la Quintinye — was son of the Chief Gardener of Chateau 

 d'Anet, where he collected rare flowers and medical herbs and enjoyed the 

 confidence of its owner the Due d'Aumale. 



Claude Mollet was the first, in 1582, in France to create the 'parterres a 

 compartiments et broderie,' after the designs of the Sieur du Perac, architect 

 to the King, of which Olivier de Serres gives examples. 



In 1595, he laid out the gardens of Saint Germain-en-Laye,^ of Monceaux and 

 of Fontainebleau, where by 1607 he had planted 7000 feet of fruit trees, bearing 

 fruit existing half a century later. In the Tuileries he made fine plantations 

 of Cypresses, destroyed in the winter of 1608, when the hardier box and 

 yew were substituted. 



His work ' Theatre des Plans et Jardinages' appeared in 1652 at Paris, 

 with twenty-two plates of designs of parterres, bosquets, labyrinths and 

 palisades, invented by himself and his sons Andre, Jacques and Noel, and 

 was several times re-printed and translated at Stockholm and London. The 

 translation is sometimes attributed to his son Andre, who helped him. Mollet 

 was the first to apply meteorology, which he calls * Astrology,' to gardening. 

 Near the Plotel de Matignon, where Claude Mollet lived, behind St Thomas 

 of the Louvre, he had raised white Mulberries, producing in 1606 12 lbs of 

 silk, which he sold at 4 crowns (40 francs) the lb. 



^ See Illustration in Appendix. 



