Jardins d'Albertas, French formal garden in Bouc-Bel-Air, France.
Jardins d'Albertas is a terraced French formal garden in Bouc-Bel-Air, laid out on two axes, east-west and north-south, around a long central perspective. Its 17th-century core keeps the grand canal with thirteen mascaron spouts, a grotto covered in limestone concretions and shells, and a large basin with eight tritons. Monumental statues of Hercules, David with his sling, the god Mars and the Borghese gladiator stand among the parterres.
Jean-Baptiste Albertas, a high-ranking judge in Aix-en-Provence, commissioned these gardens in 1751 on family land purchased decades earlier in 1673. The long gap between acquiring the property and creating the garden shows how the family's circumstances and tastes evolved over time.
The garden's name comes from the d'Albertas family, who acquired the land through Marc-Antoine d'Albertas's 1673 marriage to Madeleine de Séguiran. Each spring since 1992 it has hosted the Journées des Plantes d'Albertas, a plant fair that now brings together more than 180 nursery growers and craftspeople.
The garden is laid out on terraces along two axes, east–west and north–south, reached by gravel paths and steps, so allow time to walk between levels. The Journées des Plantes d'Albertas, held each year since 1992, bring together more than 180 nursery growers and craftspeople in spring and summer.
The garden's most important infrastructure is largely invisible: earthworks, water-supply galleries, pipes and drains, and underground cisterns built to store water and feed the fountains. The succession inventory of 1680 already describes most of what still exists, a continuity of three and a half centuries.
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