© Janet Davis
Though the word bagatelle translates as “a trifling sum or matter”, this expansive
garden set like a jewel in Paris’s leafy Bois de Boulogne is no mere
bagatelle. The name instead refers to
the chateau on its grounds, a tiny pink jewel whose storied beginning
epitomized the excesses of the royal court in pre-revolutionary France.
In 1775,
the Comte d’Artois, aged 18 and brother of Louis XVI, purchased a 60-year old
house and its surrounding 1.5 hectare estate
-- aristocratic hunting grounds then in ruins -- in the Bois de
Boulogne, intent on creating his own folly (from folie, meaning “leaf”, as in country house). On seeing the property a year or so later,
Marie Antoinette teased her 
young brother-in-law that she
planned to visit in two months and wagered a 100,000 livres bet that the chateau could not be rebuilt before her return
to Versailles.
An architect
was hired and work began on September 21st, 1777. Nine hundred labourers worked night and day, all the building
supplies west of Paris were commandeered, and on November 26th, the
new folie –a small chateau -- was completed.
The Comte d’Artois won the bet.
He then
acquired an additional 14 hectares and hired a Scottish landscape gardener,
Thomas Blaikie, to design a vast park around the chateau, complete with
valleys, 
rivers and lakes. The gardens caused
quite a stir, since their informal nature was very unlike the rigid formal
designs usually seen in regal French estates, such as the one André LeNôtre
designed for Louis XIV at Versailles.
With the Latin inscription Parva sed Apta (small but
well-adapted) inscribed on the main façade, the gardens and buildings were
finally completed in 1788.
When the
French Revolution broke out in 1789, the Comte d’Artois fled Paris for Turin,
Italy and Bagatelle was seized by the State.
In 1806, Napoleon I purchased the property and turned it into a hunting
lodge.
Bagatelle
passed from owner to owner, including family of the Comte d’Artois, who
returned to France in 1815 and 
eventually became king. In 1835, the estate was sold to an English
aristocrat, Lord Seymour, a friend of Napoleon III. He extended the grounds to 24 hectares and laid out an equestrian
practice yard where the Prince Imperial took riding lessons under the watchful
eye of his mother, Empress Eugenie, who sat in her summerhouse on an adjacent
hill. Finally, in 1905, Bagatelle was
expropriated by the Paris City Council to become part of the city’s woodland
park, the Bois de Boulogne, on the Route
de Sevres a Neuilly.
Today,
it’s a popular destination for tourists and Parisians alike. There are rolling lawns, lakes, grottos,
rare trees, numerous plant collections – Japanese irises in a long aquatic
trough are one of my favorite -- and over a million spring bulbs. In the perennial garden, a long, spectacular
flowering wall – the Presentation Wall --
is blanketed with clematis vines intertwined with climbing roses. It is one of the most thrilling sights I’ve
ever encountered.
But
Bagatelle is most renowned for its formal rose gardens, where 9,000 antique and
modern roses fill beds, climb pillars, festoon swags and adorn pergolas. On any summer weekend, thousands of
rose-lovers can be found strolling the paths, stopping now and again to sniff a
perfumed blossom. And on the third
Wednesday each June, celebrated rose-breeders from around the world meet under
Empress Eugenie’s summerhouse for the International New Rose Competition,
hoping to take home a coveted medal.
Adapted from a story that appeared
in President’s Choice magazine