In the Gardens of Versailles, A Horticultural Revolution

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

VERSAILL ES, France -- Alain Baraton is an untraditional gardener in perhaps the most traditional garden on the planet.

He is the keeper of the Gardens of Versailles -- with hundreds of acres of flower beds as meticulously manicured as a beauty queen's nails and trees so ancient they bore witness to the French Revolution.

Today, Baraton is leading another revolution on the 2,100-acre estate. Rather than fretting over the climate change that is robbing the chestnut trees of their fall colors and killing the pine trees of Louis XIV's reign, Baraton is seizing shifting weather patterns as a chance to transform gardening across France.

Take the bug problem. Over the last few years, French winters have become too warm to kill off the greedy insects that love to dine on Versailles' 18,500 carefully pruned chestnut trees. After several years of battling the bugs, Baraton stopped spraying them with insecticides.

Instead, he left them in the bark to grow fat and juicy.

"Now, in spring, more birds are coming back," declared Baraton, a soft-spoken man with eyebrows as bushy as the caterpillars that inhabit his flower beds. "It's helping the balance of the gardens."

Baraton is using his lofty perch as the most enviable gardener in France to preach the gospel of bio-gardening to a cultivation-crazed society. According to estimates by Promojardin, an association that promotes gardening as a hobby, 89 percent of all French people dabble with plants -- whether in a full-fledged garden patch or in windowsill flower pots.

On his radio program, his television show and in his ninth and newest gardening book, Baraton urges home gardeners to follow his lead from the lavish grounds of Versailles.

"For many children, aphids are fabulous monsters," writes Baraton, 50. "It would be a shame to destroy this extraordinary life by inconsiderate use of insecticide."

He is also changing the gardening style of centuries of French royalty.

"What's important is to keep the spirit and the visual aspects," Baraton said. " I look for plants that resemble older ones, or some that can be pruned like the ones from back then."

He's altered the practice of planting row upon clipped row of the same species of trees.

"Nowadays, we vary the species of trees -- beech, hawthorn, poplar, chestnut -- to prevent major losses in case of a disease affecting one type of tree," he said.

And he downright frowns on some of the practices of various bygone Versailles royals.

In times past, palace residents sent ships around the world to collect exotic plants and trees for the estate. One king even imported coffee bean plants for growing and grinding his own brew.

Baraton recommends sticking to native flora. He lashes out at gardeners who would buy a century-old olive tree -- such as those for sale in upscale Parisian flower shops -- as pillaging natural resources.

As a youngster, Baraton's love of gardening earned him an unpleasant nickname from his siblings -- the French word for cow dung. But in 30 years, he rose from a teenager collecting parking fees from Versailles visitors to the chief of the entire gardening operation with its 100-member staff.

"It's difficult to be 18 and say you're a gardener," Baraton said of his status change in the eyes of his brothers and sisters. "It's easier when you live at Versailles."

Now, even business moguls with mansions of their own show a little jealousy when he mentions that he makes his home amid the iconic gardens. "It's a nice feeling to have a billionaire envy you," he said, leading a visitor down the back lanes of the massive estate, where he paused to say "bonjour" to a speckled hen at the roadside and a complaining white swan in a pond.

Sometimes the notoriety can get a little annoying.

"At parties, very elegant women sit next to me and ask why their plants have stains and why their trees are dying," Baraton said, rolling his eyes skyward.

What most worries the chief gardener of Versailles?

His recurring nightmare is that the planting of 50,000 flowers he oversees each year "won't be beautiful."

"If it doesn't work, you realize it only after the flowers start blooming."

He paused, smiling mischievously. "It's never happened, but I always worry."

Baraton said he also fears that "an old or sick tree planted during the time of the French Revolution will fall on a visitor." One of the cruelest decisions he has to make is cutting down a potentially dangerous 300-year-old tree.

Between his broadcasts and directing his staff, Baraton said he does little of the actual spadework in the gardens these days.

Even at home, he said, he leaves most of the yard chores to his wife.

"After 30 years of spending my weekends doing the gardening," he said, "I'd rather just a read a book in the garden."

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.

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