André Mollet

His lasting record is his handsomely-printed folio, Le Jardin de plaisir ("The Pleasure Garden") [1], Stockholm 1651, which he illustrated with meticulous 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 parterres, 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.

[2] Henrietta Maria was Mollet's main patron, and she sent him back to France to her mother Marie de' Medici with a request for fruit trees and flowers.

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.

With the English Restoration 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.