Versailles: the pièce de résistance of modern gardening

Lizzie Davies finds out how the head gardener at the Palace of Versailles, Alain Baraton, is defying traditionalists and dragging the magnificent grounds into the 21st century.

The gardens of Versailles have seen many a horticultural trailblazer in their time. Louis XIV started it off with his Sun King fountains, proliferation of bosquets and the odd lover’s grotto. His successor, Louis XV, created the jardins botaniques, and Marie Antoinette loved nothing more than to gambol in meadows and play the peasant in her own model village.

Now, though, the grounds have Alain Baraton. The charismatic head of the vast 850-hectare (2,000-acre) park has made it his mission to bring change to some of the most traditional landscapes in the world and to turn Versailles into a model of sustainable gardening.

Faced with a changing weather patterns that are wreaking havoc on plants and wildlife, the chief gardener has decided to defy the traditionalists and turn his back on centuries of horticultural practice. It is imperative, he says, to move with the times. “The gardener always has to look to the future,” he explains. “We are witnessing an enormous change in climate. I remember the time when you could go ice-skating on the Grand Canal. Those days are gone. It just isn’t as cold as before.”

Climate change has made itself felt all around the park in ways Baraton, who came to Versailles in 1976 and has stayed ever since, could never have imagined. Fooled by the mild temperatures, the chestnut trees are flowering twice a year and losing their glorious autumnal glow as a result. The pine trees that have lined the park’s avenues since the reign of Louis XIV are dying in unprecedented numbers. Last year saw so much rain that the lawns didn’t have to be mowed once.

Most gardeners would have been worried, even defeated. But Baraton, 51, saw in the changing environment a chance for a rethink. Insecticides were the first thing to go. Noticing the futility of applying chemicals to get rid of bugs which would only return, enticed by the warmer winters, in greater numbers, he declared a blanket ban.

As well as reflecting his belief that every living thing – no matter how tiny or ugly – deserves a place in his garden, the controversial move had an unexpected bonus: lured by the prospect of big, juicy insects to feast on, birds returned to Versailles in numbers not seen for decades.

“It’s wonderful,” says Baraton. “There are a lot more big birds, the green woodpecker for instance. We’ve seen the return of the tit, which is a fabulously beautiful little bird, of sparrows and, above all, of swallows. They had disappeared. Now, they’re back.”

Trees have also been witness to a different approach. The traditional practice of growing the same species for each avenue and each carefully pruned driveway, is long gone; the gardeners now try to vary the species to prevent major losses in case any one type falls victim to a disease.

Baraton’s many reforms have made him a cult hero among the organic gardeners of France. He has a weekly slot on French television and radio, and is even experimenting with ‘bio’ wine, a Merlot of which, despite being “no grand cru”, he is rather proud. But he rejects the organic label, insisting much of his work is just about common sense.

“It seems odd to have to use a term to describe a natural garden. A garden is normal when it is organic. It is either a garden or a polluted garden,” he says. “It’s just about trying to create a garden which is good for nature, an intelligent garden, a garden where everything has the right to life.”

Baraton, despite being the chief of arguably the world’s most famously manicured park, is unashamed about his preference for wilder gardens which allow its visitors the chance to wander aimlessly and enjoy nature at its most basic. He is unashamed, also, about his colourful use of language.

“Imagine,” he says. “A man has in front of him the most beautiful woman in the world and the only thing on his mind is how he’s going to seduce her. Except that she only ever eats at 8pm. You cannot mess up her hair. You absolutely mustn’t touch her. You can’t smoke with her; you can’t drink with her. She’s a pain in the arse! It’s the same with a garden. You have to have charm and sensuality but not so much that it’s stifling.”

Unsurprisingly, Baraton, with his flagrant irreverence for the hallowed history of Versailles, is not without his detractors. This is, after all, a place not known for its willingness to embrace modernity (and certainly not known for comparing its grounds to the body of a beautiful woman).

His decision to replace the uniform flowerbeds in front of the Trianon palace with a riot of multi-coloured plants enraged many traditionalists obsessed, says Baraton, by a ‘nostalgia’ for the Versailles of yesteryear. “For about a hundred years the flowerbeds here were systematically planted with begonias. It was begonias, begonias, begonias. I decided to change that. Now there are all kinds of flowers in all kinds of colours. People said to me: ‘how dare you?'”

Those same people were even more angry when he decided to let the grass grow on some of the lawns where Marie Antoinette used to meet her lover for secret trysts. Baraton, an indefatiguable romantic, wanted to recreate the possibility of such hidden rendez-vous – not only for illicit lovers, but for children who want to play at hide and seek.

“Scandal,” he laughs. “They were really very angry. But now, wildflowers are growing there and you can’t see that there are moles there so no one thinks of killing them. The park is more beautiful and the animals are much happier. What more could you want?”