Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps

Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps (June 7, 1824 at Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher – September 12, 1873 at Vichy) was a French horticulturist and landscape architect. He was the chief gardener of Paris during the reign of Emperîor Napoleon III, and was responsible for planting the great gardens of the French Second Empire; the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes, Parc Montsouris, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the remaking of the Luxembourg Garden, and many smaller Parisian parks and gardens. He was also responsible for planting trees along the new boulevards of Paris. His landscape gardens, with their lakes, winding paths, sloping lawns, groves of exotic trees and flower beds, had a large influence on public parks throughout Europe and in the United States.

Barillet-Deschamps was born in 1824, the son of a gardener. His first job in 1841 was as a monitor and teacher in a revolutionary new kind of prison colony called "La Paternelle," founded near Tours in 1839, where the prisoners learned farming and gardening. From there he went to Bordeaux, where he started a gardening enterprise, and met Baron Haussmann, then the Prefect of the Gironde Department. He also met Jean-Charles Alphand, an engineer who worked for Haussmann.

When the Emperor Napoleon III brought Haussmann to Paris to be the new Prefect of the Seine Department, Haussmann summoned both Alphand and Barillet-Deschamps to Paris. The Emperior had conceived a plan to create large new parks around Paris, to provide green space and recreation for the rapidly growing population of the city. He named Alphand as the head of the new Service des Promenades et Plantations de Paris, and Alphand chose Barillet-Deschamps as the first jardinier en chef, or Chief Gardener of Paris. Barillet-Deschamps worked in close collaboration with Alphand, the engineer Eugene Belgrand (1810-1870), who was charged with providing water to the new parks, and with the architect Gabriel Davioud, who designed all the structures in the parks.

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