- Rendez-vous de l'Institut
- Conference
La nature des jardins d’André Le Nôtre : fleurs anciennes, topiaires, orangers et autres arbustes by Pierre BONNAURE – Château de Bénouville
The nature of André Le Nôtre’s gardens: old flowers, topiaries, orange trees and other shrubs
Via examples of the most prestigious of Le Nôtre’s works: Versailles, Trianon, Fontainebleau, Chantilly, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Sceaux and the Tuileries, but also many other, lesser known sites, we will set off on a discovery of the plants used in those gardens : old flowers, topiaries, orange trees and other shrubs.
Pierre Bonnaure
Pierre Bonnaure has been head gardener at the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre since 2007. After studying landscaping, he specialised in the history of gardens at the ENSA – National School of Architecture in Versailles and at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, then prepared a thesis entitled “D’encre et de sève” (Of ink and of sap), focusing on the relationship between “art and nature in Le Nôtre’s gardens”. Thus, his research work concentrates on the materiality of these gardens and, more particularly, their plants, from flowers to trees, via topiaries… delving into the way they are grown and the way they behave, their place and their role in the composition of these gardens or how they were perceived by Le Nôtre’s contemporaries. For the Louvre in particular, he was in charge of renovation of the gardens at the Eugène Delacroix national museum.