The First French Renaissance Garden
Château Gaillard, Amboise
In 1496, King Charles VIII, who was born, grew up and died in the Royal Château of Amboise had a dream.
Blown away by Renaissance Italy, his dream was to have an Italian Style Garden at Château Amboise. He dreamed of porticos, columns, vases and statues. He envisaged gravel paths, terraces and mysterious labyrinths. Dreaming of the sound of rippling water, he wanted cascades, fountains, fish ponds and grottoes.
Statue: Château Gaillard, Amboise
When he returned home, he brought with him a monk and a master gardener from Naples. They were the gifted hydraulic engineers, Pacello da Mercogliano and Fra Giocondo, an expert on Roman aqueducts.
Charles gave them the onerous task of bringing water from the Loire far below to irrigate his dreamed of flower beds, vines, parterres, plants in pots and avenues.
The problem was that the Château was built as a fortress on a spur, on top of very high, very steep, defensible slopes. How to get water all the way up to the gardens above the river was no mean feat. It didn’t work.
No matter. He had another château in reserve. This one was on the flat, south facing and had the river Amasse flowing through the estate.
Charles rebuilt the crumbling gone to rack and ruin old mediaeval Château Gaillard. Built against a sixty-five foot high cliff, sheltered from the north winds its microclimate was similar to that of the Mediterranean.
There, Dom Pacello worked a mini miracle. He landscaped the marshy land.
He transformed it by laying lawns and creating never seen before flower beds. He acclimatised orange and lemon trees in wine barrels cut in half.
He cultivated a wide variety of vegetables and fruits in plots separated by windbreaks to supply the royal household.
He built greenhouses and hothouses and created France’s first Orangery.
Château Gaillard saw the first orange, lemon, greengage and peach trees grown outside the Mediterranean.
France saw its first tomato, melon, greenhouse, garden pots and boxes used for horticulture.
Fountain: Château Gaillard - Amboise
Dom Pacello was not able to reproduce the sophisticated water features Charles dreamed of but did divert the river through the gardens to build a lovely fountain.
Bingo! Known as The King’s Gardens, The King’s Gardener created France’s first Renaissance Garden in France’s first Renaissance Château for France’s first Renaissance King.
Charles was delighted. He said ‘all this earthly paradise, this garden of Eden lacked was Adam and Eve’.
Dom Pacello, like his neighbour and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci who lived in Château Clos Lucé, he never went home.
In 1503 he was elected a canon of Saint-Sauveur collegiate church in Blois and died in Amboise in 1534 age eighty-seven.
In 2010 Monsieur Marc Lelandais also had a dream. To buy Gaillard and restore the Château and gardens as they were when Charles VIII saw them five hundred years ago.
Both dreams came true. He has done a grand job.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art), Photography by Mark.
Explore Château Gaillard Amboise and it’s amazing gardens with prize winning Photographer Mark Playle.
