THE GARDENS OF FRANCE 
ASA STEELE 
Deeply Rooted in Ancient Tradition Quite Unlike Our Own Yet 
Offering Distinct Suggestion for the American Gardener of To-day 
OVERS of flowers from time out of mind, the French 
are known as a nation of garden builders — a reputation 
amply substantiated not only bv the statelv terraces 
and avenues of palace and chateau; by the sweep of 
lawns and groves in public parks; but more especially, it seemed to 
me, as 1 traveled about, by their countless small gardens which 
hold messages of concise interest for the American gardener. No 
strip of soil appears too small or too unpromising to be worthy 
of loving toil and its rewarding chaplet of blossoms. However 
poor and lonely the farmhouse, ancient Roses weave lace-like 
patterns on its white walls or over its gateway; while Begonia, 
Jasmine, and Lilac add loveliness to the narrow curb between 
the home and the highway. 
The spirit of this beauty and the message of these small 
French gardens to Americans cannot be fully comprehended 
unless a glimpse be had into the souls of the people who made 
them. Theirs is a genius compacted of artistry and thrift. 
“ We would all be poets,” they seem to say, “ but let us not forget 
the bread for the table and coals in the grate.” A thousand 
years of grim necessity and the hardships of war have distilled 
in them the essence of a curious logic and a no less curious senti- 
ment. The French love flowers? They glory in them — with 
practical limitations! 
Memories of the gorgeous masses of bloom on the pavements 
of the Madeleine in Paris are less enduring than those of carts 
piled high with blossoms on village market days — Hyacinths, 
Primroses, Hawthorn, Lilacs, Camellias and Roses, which might 
be recognized later beneath some lighted taper in a shrine, or 
upon the wooden jacket of one who had “gone west” and was 
borne down a muddy street with processional cross, chanting 
priests and group of tense-lipped, sorrowing friends. And while 
the statues of “La Pucelle” might be heaped with blossoms on 
her feast day in May, a nice sense of economy prescribed that 
mortuary wreaths be made of glass beads and that high altars 
blaze on Easter morning with Palms and Lilies fashioned of 
gilded tin. 
O NE who loves gardening and in it has progressed from crude 
experiment to satisfying knowledge, could not fail to note 
in France, even during the stress of war, much in the practise of 
this gentle craft to interest his fellow Americans. For in that 
land, horticulture has passed through the rude transitions 
which we encounter to an achieved maturity. Aerial bomb 
and poison gas were as powerless to efface Old World tradition 
as to destroy the eager life in bulb and branch. Like Custom, 
the Iris flaunted her victorious banners in violated gardens and 
ancient vines dripped rosy grapes from the walls of shattered 
homesteads, as serenely indifferent to Man’s outlawry as the 
Roses blooming in the Tuileries Gardens or the Lilacs embower- 
ing the tower of Jeanne d’Arc at Chinon. Limitation also 
perhaps gave added value to this particular American’s notes 
on French horticulture; for he observed as one who had built 
and cultivated his garden with his own hands. His first thought 
was for other devotees of “Adam’s profession” in his home 
land who possessed small and intimate plantations, developed 
by their imagination and personal enterprise. 
Questions of plan and vista, however, can not be ignored. 
In them is seen the chrysalis from which burst the golden but- 
terfly of garden lore, more aptly called, mayhap, the germ of 
romance in gardening; a romance which has required two 
thousand years in the telling. When an American rears a 
terrace, plants a rose garden at its base, and in the midst places 
a pool, fed by water trickling from a rockery, he little thinks 
that he has copied a practice in Roman horticulture as old as | 
the Christian era. 
The ancient gardens of Italy and their daughters of the : 
Renaissance may have been planned for a society and a climate 1 
different from ours; but the ideas which they embodied were 
carried to France and England, and have filtered into America 
in forms that are too often blind copies, lacking the inspiration 
of the originals. Whether the chapters of the great romance 
were evolved under Italian skies or in some French or English 
forest, the aspiration was the same and the differences in ex- 
pression merely .evolutions of national needs and tastes. So 
the bare outlines of the romance seem not amiss here as a sort 
of preamble necessary to any genuine understanding of the 
meaning of French gardens and their message to America. 
With the apparent paradox of a Frenchman’s thrift and his 
lavish artistry in mind, there may be fewer objections to the 
opinion that Mars, not Flora should be the patron deity of the 
old French gardens. Perils from enemies, whether bands of 
predatory outlaws or armies at war, imposed upon the people 
of Old France the necessity of making their dwellings veritable 
fortresses. Farmhouses immured in high walls seem to have 
huddled in a panic around some village church, as terror-stricken 
children flee to their mother’s skirts at sight of a rabid dog. 
They give point to the traditional order of Charlemagne to his 
hordes: “Where you see a church spire— loot!” Scores of 
other dwellings are no more than caves in the neighborhood of 
Poitiers and in Loire Inferieur. French fortresses cause the 
word “chateau” to be synonymous with “castle.” 
As an appendage to the innermost courtyard of the old 
chateau, where the noble master and his family found seclusion, 
was a simple, contracted garden. Sometimes it was little more 
than a terrace on a cliff or between the battlements, where a 
chatelaine might linger among her Rose-trees, frolic with her 
children or watch for the approach of her lord and his retinue 
along the neighboring highway. It was such a condition that 
defined the narrow limits and plans of the old gardens. From 
such necessities were to arise traditions which rule French 
horticulture to this day. 
When a warrior’s strong box was as full of treasure as were 
his years with mighty deeds and the King’s mouth with his 
praises, he built a great, fortified chateau. Nor did he forget 
to provide outlying acres, surrounded by defensible walls, for 
the castle gardens. The lords of the older citadels, not to be 
outdone, extended their battlements to include adjacent lands 
for similar uses. Whence was to come the inspiration for mak- 
ing these gardens worthy of the great dwellings? France turned 
to Italy, her imperial foster-mother. 
The Italian gardens had been copied from and sometimes 
were built on the ruins of ancient Roman estates. Most of 
them rose on three terraces, upon sloping ground. On the 
lowest level was a formal flower garden. The dwelling oc- 
cupied the middle terrace. Above it, on a third elevation, were 
groves of trees which served as a background and a secluded 
refuge from summer heat. 
The designers of the fortified French chateaux brought from 
Italy little more, at first, than the plans of the formal flower 
gardens. Unless the old prints deceive, Jeanne of Domremy, 
riding into Chinon to offer herself to her sovereign and to 
France, found in the castle yard before the royal lodge no such 
dense thickets of Lilac and Locust as embower it to-day, but 
one of these formal yea-and-nay gardens, the squares and rec- 
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