Garden in Bayou or Bayou in the Garden: Design Provenance and Environmental Adaptation at Le Petit Versailles

Abstract

Tracing the design provenance and formal evolution of a garden provides a fairly narrow understanding of the garden as place. A garden is conditioned by site-specific environmental factors, as well as by broader patterns of cultural inheritance. In fact, a garden's long-term physical survival is determined as much by adaptability to localised environmental context as by sustained recognition of cultural significance. Indeed, a garden may display elements of a recognised design tradition and still be largely vernacular in its environmental expression.