FRENCH GARDENING AND ITS MASTER 
Bv JOHN GALEN HOWARD 
FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 
S UCH a subject as that upon which I have been asked 
to say a few words is of far too vast a scope to be 
adequately treated within the limits of a short paper. 
I have therefore thought it wise to single out one great epoch 
and to con¬ 
fine my re¬ 
marks and 
my illustra¬ 
tions mainly 
tothatperiod. 
This can the 
more justly 
and the more 
readily be 
done in 
speaking of 
French gar¬ 
dens, inas¬ 
much as all 
the early his¬ 
tory of hor¬ 
ticulture i n 
France leads 
up to the per¬ 
iod I propose 
especially to 
principles which governed it and made its greatness. 
The entire history of French gardening is dominated in a 
degree very exceptional in any art or people by a single per¬ 
sonality—that, namely, of Le Notre. I do not mean to say, 
A LEAD VASE 
Basin of Neptune, Versailles 
illustrate ; 
and ever 
since that 
time, all work 
of French¬ 
men in land¬ 
scape design 
has been 
done with 
that age of 
achievement 
very vividly 
in the eye of 
the artist, 
whether he 
worked from 
it as an ac¬ 
cepted proto¬ 
type, or flung 
himself into 
eager oppo¬ 
sition to the 
97 
