What makes a garden distinctly French? A geometrical layout, straight lines of regular topiary and not a hair out of place! How, Muriel asks, did the jardin à la française develop as an expression of French thought and sensibility? Together, one man, royal gardener André Le Nôtre, and his king, Louis XIV the monarch absolute, turbo-charged an ornamental tradition imported from Italy to create Versailles, with its heliocentric design and extraordinary display of mastery of man over nature. Wonderful artistry or neurotic obsession with power? Certainly, French gardens speak intensely of political ideas as well as aesthetics. Suzanne wonders where all Gallic insouciance has gone. Jean-Jacques Rousseau guest-stars.
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