The Garden Landscape Guide

Book: History of Garden Design and Gardening
Chapter: Chapter 3: European Gardens (500AD-1850)

Rouen gardens

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237.The suburban gardens at Rouen are kept in good order, and for the most part contain collections of orange trees; that of Mr. Pugh, an Englishman, contains a hundred trees, which, in 1823, produced 1400 lbs. of blossoms; which sell, on an average of years, at three francs per pound. The sum produced is supposed to pay something more than the expense of keeping the trees; a circumstance which accounts for the number of orange trees in France. The villa of the Abbe Gossier was in the Rue da Nord. The situation is one of the highest in the town; and from a pavilion on the top of the house were seen the whole of the town and an extensive reach of the river. The garden contained above an acre, surrounded by a wall, and somewhat varied in surface by nature, but much more so by the art and taste of the abbe. Before the principal front of the house was a small lawn, bordered by groups of trees, which completely concealed the town, and formed a varied outline to the sky and the distance. All except this lawn was in the artificial style suited to a walled garden, and consisted of terraced slopes, espaliers, hedges, dwarf fruit trees, vines, shrubs, fanciful little railings, and a line of posts and chains. There was an orangery; and among a variety of curious contrivances about the house was a painting of a portiere and a watch-dog, calculated to surprise a stranger on entering from the street. This villa is now destroyed.