Alain Baraton

"So you like flowers ? " Louis XVI said to his young queen. "Well, l have a bouquet for you - the Petit Trianon." And so it was that Marie-Antoinette took over the splendid former residence of Madame de Pompadour, transforming the gardens into an enchanted landscape. Elisabeth de Feydeau takes readers on a journey through Marie-Antoinette's eighteenth-century estate : stroll in the queen's footsteps through beds of hyacinth, buttercups, and anemones in the French Garden ; follow winding paths among Judas trees in the English Garden ; pass through conifers towards the Belvedere, where fabulous late night festivities were held ; inhale the entrancing aromas of the shrubs surrounding the Temple of Love ; enjoy the bountiful orchards and kitchen gardens of the Queen's Hamlet ; and linger among the wildflowers in the Wood of Solitude.
Using archival documents, Elisabeth de Feydeau recreates a fanciful herbarium, highlighting species that were newly discovered in Marie-Antoinette s time, detailing the cosmetic or medicinal uses of many of the garden's plants, and recounting vivid anecdotes from the royal court. The queen's gardens are captured in eighty-three eighteenth-century botanical illustrations, including watercolors by Marie-Antoinette's official court artist, the renowned botanist and painter Pierre Joseph Redouté.