French landscape garden

The French landscape garden (French: jardin paysager, jardin a l'anglaise, jardin pittoresque, jardin anglo-chinois) is a style of garden inspired by idealized romantic landscapes and the paintings of Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, European ideas about Chinese gardens, and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The style originated in England, as the "English landscape garden", in the early 18th century and spread to France, where, in the late 18th and early 19th century, it gradually replaced the symmetrical French formal garden (jardin à la française).

Even during the lifetime of Louis XIV and his gardens of Versailles, the formal, symmetrical jardin à la française was criticized by writers La Fontaine, Madame de Sévigné, Fénelon and Saint-Simon for imposing tyranny over nature. In 1709, in his influential book on garden design, Dezallier d'Argenville called for garden designers to pay more attention to nature than to art. Signs of a new, more natural style were seen in the design of the bousquet des Sources at the Trianon, created by André Le Nôtre, and in the bousquets of the Château de Marly, created by Hardouin-Mansart. After the military defeats of France at the beginning of the 18th century and the freezing winter of 1709, the royal treasury was unable to finance upkeep of the elaborate gardens of Versailles. Trees were untrimmed, gardens and paths were overgrown. France was ready for the introduction of a new style of gardens.

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