the luxury of garden building. A few orchards and a few patches of herbs or 

 vegetables were cultivated by monks, but nothing was contributed to the art oi 

 garden design until the beginning of the Renaissance, when the Italians began to 

 study the classics and the classic form of art. Lorenzo de Medici, as patron of all 

 the arts in Florence, first gave the impetus to the revival of the classic style. He 

 made his garden a museum of sculpture and decoration, so that gradually the 

 grounds became a decorative adjunct to the house; and the great artists of his 

 time, such as Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, and Raphael, were not satisfied with 

 designing palaces and decorating them with frescos and carving, but must needs 

 design the gardens too. In the beginning the gardens they created were like those 

 of classic Rome, but gradually the greater freedom of the Renaissance manifested 

 itself, and the villa gardens of Rome and Northern Italy which we know to-day 

 were the result. 



In common with all other great periods of artistic activity, the Italian Renais- 

 sance reached a climax, followed by a swift degeneration during which exaggera- 

 tion became the keynote of all designing. In the gardens trees were no longer 

 allowed to grow in their natural forms, and, as had been the case in the latter 

 period of Roman art when artistic ideals had degenerated, the architecture became 

 more important than the vegetation. But fortunately, long before the baroque 

 period, the art of garden building, together with the other arts, had crossed the 

 Alps to take a new start, under new conditions and amid different surroundings, 

 in France, y 



One important feature of the Italian gardens had been the terraces, steps, 

 and ramps, which were necessary in Italy because of the hills on which the villas 

 were generally built; another had been the ease with which water could be 

 introduced as an important feature. In France the natural conditions were no 

 longer the same, and the gardens in consequence were different. The land was 

 more commonly level, and it became necessary to sink the parterres in order to 

 get an effect of relief and to have an excuse for terracing, nor could the architects, 

 for the same reason, use cascades and grottoes in their designs as easily as foun- 

 tains and basins. Many of the important estates bordered on forests, and a forest 

 background demanded different treatment from that required when the Roman 

 Campagna formed the setting. The trees and flowers, as well as the building 

 materials and incidental architecture, too, were different, so that the French soon 

 developed a distinct style in garden design. 



It was Andre le Notre, the designer of the park at Versailles and the favorite 

 landscape gardener of Louis XIV., who, more than any other, was the cause of the 



