André Mollet (died before 16 June 1665) was a French

garden designer A garden designer is someone who designs the plan and features of gardens, either as an amateur or professional. The compositional elements of garden design and landscape design are: terrain, water, planting, constructed elements and buildings, ...

, the son of

Claude Mollet Claude Mollet (ca. 1564 – shortly before 1649), ''premier jardinier du Roy'' — first gardener to three French kings, Henri IV, Louis XIII and the young Louis XIV — was a member of the Mollet dynasty of French garden designers in th ...

—gardener to three French kings—and the grandson of Jacques Mollet, gardener at the

château d'Anet The Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France. It was built on the former château at the ...

, where Italian formal gardening was introduced to France.

Royal appointment

André Mollet became royal gardener to Queen Christina in Stockholm. His lasting record is his handsomely-printed folio, ''Le Jardin de plaisir'' ("The Pleasure Garden"

Stockholm 1651, which he illustrated with meticulous intaglio printing, copperplate engravings after his own designs, and which, with an eye to a European aristocratic clientele, he published in Swedish, French and German. In his designs the rich patterning of

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

s, which had formerly been a garden feature of interest in isolation, was for the first time arranged in significant relation to the plan of the house. Mollet's designs coordinated the elements of scythed turf—making its debut here as an essential element of garden design—with gravel paths, basins and

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were ori ...

s, parterres, ''

bosquet In the French formal garden, a ''bosquet'' (French, from Italian ''bosco'', "grove, wood") is a formal plantation of trees in a wide variety of forms, some open at the bottom and others not. At a minimum a bosquet can be five trees of identical s ...

s'' and ''

allée In landscaping, an avenue (from the French), alameda (from the Portuguese and Spanish), or allée (from the French), is traditionally a straight path or road with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side, which is used, as its L ...

Summoned to England

Mollet was summoned to England in the 1620s to lay out gardens for

Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after hi ...

and perhaps the parterres at

Wilton House Wilton House is an English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years. It was built on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution ...

, but by 1633 he was in the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, for whom he laid out '' parterres en broderie'' that included the

lion rampant The lion is a common charge in heraldry. It traditionally symbolises courage, nobility, royalty, strength, stateliness and valour, because historically the lion has been regarded as the "king of beasts". The lion also carries Judeo-Chr ...

of the prince's coat-of-arms, in turf and clipped

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...

, set in colored gravels at

Huis Honselaarsdijk Huis Honselaarsdijk is a former palace and country residence of the Dutch Stadtholders and princes of Orange which lies about 2.6 km (2 mi) southwest of the border of The Hague, the Netherlands. It was one of the finest examples of Baroque arch ...

, and at the prince's other main residence,

Huis ter Nieuwburg Huis ter Nieuwburg or Huis ter Nieuburch ("House at New Borough") was a palace in Rijswijk, Holland, Dutch Republic. The symmetrical French Classicist building was probably designed by the Dutch architect Jacob van Campen together with Consta ...

near

Rijswijk Rijswijk (), formerly known as Ryswick ( ) in English, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Its population was in , and it has an area of , of which is water. The municipality also includes t ...

Return to France

Mollet returned to France in 1635, but he was back in England by 1642, when he was designing gardens for Queen Henrietta-Maria at Wimbledon Palace. He presumably returned to France after the outbreak of the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

later that year, and dropped from sight. In the autumn of 1646, a Swedish delegation arrived in Paris, led by Christina's favourite, the connoisseur Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, who was so pleased with recent French developments in the art of gardens that he engaged Mollet for the queen on the spot. Mollet took on two assistants and provided himself with orange and lemon trees and

pomegranate The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punicoideae, that grows between tall. The pomegranate was originally described throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean re ...

s, with myrtle, laurel trees and Spanish jasmine,Karling, p. 21 all of which were tender and destined for an

orangerie An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very lar ...

. He also procured

tulip Tulips (''Tulipa'') are a genus of spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs). The flowers are usually large, showy and brightly coloured, generally red, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm ...

bulbs and

ranunculus ''Ranunculus'' is a large genus of about almost 1700 to more than 1800 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus are known as buttercups, spearworts and water crowfoots. The genus is distributed in Europe ...

roots. Then there was a frustrating delay of a full season before the official confirmation arrived.

Sweden

Mollet's stay in Sweden lasted five years, during which he introduced to Sweden the French ''parterres en broderie'' patterned like Baroque textiles. He modernized the existing gardens linked to the royal palace in Stockholm and laid out a new garden in the outskirts of Stockholm on the site of a former hop-garden, the ''

Humlegården Humlegården is a major park in the district of Östermalm in Stockholm, Sweden. The park borders on Karlavägen in the north, Sturegatan in the east, Humlegårdsgatan in the south and Engelbrektsgatan in the west. It is the location of the Swe ...

''. The introduction of a Baroque garden style in Sweden dates to this decade, with the encouragement of progressive

Francophile A Francophile, also known as Gallophile, is a person who has a strong affinity towards any or all of the French language, French history, French culture and/or French people. That affinity may include France itself or its history, language, cuisin ...

architects like

Nicodemus Tessin the Elder Nicodemus Tessin the Elder () (7 December 1615 in Stralsund – 24 May 1681 in Stockholm) was an important Swedish architect. Biography Nicodemus Tessin was born in Stralsund in Pomerania and came to Sweden as a young man. There he met and wor ...

and

Jean de la Vallée Jean de la Vallée (ca 1620 – 12 March 1696) was a Swedish architect. Biography Born in France, he was the son of architect Simon de la Vallée (ca 1595–1642). He made early trips in France and Italy where he studied the new baroque form ...

, with whom Mollet had worked in Holland, together with the eager commissions from Swedish nobles that Mollet received. The results are documented in

Erik Dahlbergh '' Count Erik Jönsson Dahlbergh (10 October 162516 January 1703) was a Swedish military engineer, Governor-general and Field marshal. He rose to the level of nobility through his military competence. As an architect and draftsman, he was reno ...

's topographical ''Suecia antiqua et hodierna''. Though Mollet left Sweden in 1653, his son Jean Mollet remained in Sweden for the rest of his life, and Médard Gue, one of André Mollet's original French assistants, assumed an independent role in Swedish gardening. Soon Mollet was in London, whence he received a passport to travel abroad once more in 1653. With the

English Restoration The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to ...

in 1660, conditions for ambitious garden-building were once more propitious, and Mollet was listed as a royal gardener, gardener-in-chief for St. James's Park. An English edition of ''Le Jardin de plaisir'' appeared in London in 1670, as ''The Pleasure Garden.'' Mollet's brother, the younger Claude Mollet, was passed over in favour of André Le Nôtre as chief gardener at the Palace of the Tuileries, in 1649.

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