Who Created The Gardens Of Versailles

Culture

This was published 6 years ago

A Little Chaos masks the true story of Versailles' incredible gardens

By Robin Powell

March 20, 2015 — 11.45pm

Movies about gardeners are rare blooms, so A Little Chaos is a bit of a thrill. Alan Rickman's film about the building of a garden at Versailles has Kate Winslet as a fictional landscape gardener with a soft spot for chaos. An order-obsessed Andre le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) grudgingly employs her and you can guess what happens next. Much as I loved watching Kate Winslet in corset and lovely leather boots, tromping through the mud, ripping out rampaging vines and sawing through overgrown trees, I like the real story of the making of the gardens at Versailles better.

How's this for a plot? Before le Notre took on Versailles, he was commissioned to work with architect Louis le Vau and painter Charles le Brun on the French finance minister Nicholas Fouquet's new Chateaux de Vaux-le-Vicomte. No expense was spared on the gardens and the launch party in 1661 was the height of extravagance in an era noted for going over the top. The fountains played, papier mache whales floated on the lake, Moliere premiered a new play, and the young King Louis IV (Rickman) was the guest of honour.

Alan Rickman as Louis XIV in <i>A Little Chaos</i>. — Alan Rickman as Louis XIV in *A Little Chaos*. Credit:Alex Bailey

The big show was crazy-brave. Fouquet had been diddling the books, and though he was hardly the only aristocrat with his hand in the pocket of the French state accounts, he had powerful enemies. Three days after dangling his wealth in front of the king, he was arrested on charges of fraud. He never saw Vaux again and died 19 years later. (Here's a weird sub-plot: the real-life Man in the Iron Mask acted as his prison valet.)

Le Notre and his colleagues fared better. The king ordered the trio to start at Versailles, and warned them it had better be better than Vaux. Le Notre used many of the pioneering landscaping techniques he had developed for Fouquet. He had a marvellous eye for matching architecture and formal planting with the topography of the site: both gardens present order carved out of the forest. He was also a natural mathematician who devised clever surprises and tricks of perspective in his gardens. The scale of his vision is boggling, even more so when you know the Versailles gardens in his time were twice as big as they are now. Winslet's Madame de Barra is a fiction, but the garden she creates in the film is real. The Grotto of Thetis was built as an outdoor ballroom with marble flooring, tiered seating and fountains that run over tiers of stonework and shells. The grotto is also part of Le Notre's ingenious hydraulics scheme. Disguised at the top is a reservoir that gravity-feeds the fountains in the lower gardens.

Of course it's only fair to judge a film, or a garden, on what it is, not what it isn't, so go and see A Little Chaos for the fun of the romance, Kate in the mud, Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci having a drolly good time, and glimpses of garden. Given the chance, however, make sure you also see Le Notre's masterpieces, Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte.

IT'S TIME TO …

VISIT RETFORD PARK

Samuel Horden's 1887 English-style park and garden in Bowral opens to the public next weekend. Enjoy the fabulous trees, mature shrubberies, Persian Carpet border, and CWA scones. March 28 and 29, opengarden.org.au.

SOW SWEET PEAS

Dig over a sunny spot to loosen the soil and, a fortnight before sowing, add lots of organic matter and a handful of lime. Sow seed into damp soil and don't water again until after germination. Don't forget supports for them to grow on.

POT AND PROPAGATE

Take cuttings of soft shrubs like justicia, pentas and salvia. Dip them in hormone gel before potting into a propagating medium. Keep the mix damp.

CHECK FOR RUST

Orange powder on the underside of frangipani leaves is rust fungus. Remove affected foliage and bin it to limit the spread.