The Round green grove was closed to the public after the storm of 1999 destroyed the tree cover. The border strips were replanted in 2003, but its central lozenge, which used to contain the celebrated Water Theatre of Louis XIV, remained a waste lot awaiting a decision on its redevelopment.

It was not until 2010 that it was decided to lay out a contemporary garden here. Before work began, an archaeological operation was necessary and an excavation programme was carried out from April to June 2011.

The Water Theatre was laid out between 1671 and 1674 by Le Nôtre, backed up by the hydraulics engineers Francine and Denis, while the fountains were designed by Le Brun. It consisted of a large almost round area with two semicircular amphitheatres with tiers of seats and separated by an oblong pool divided into two levels of water. The semicircular stage was framed by three triangular cascades falling in tiers, adorned with varied seashells and numerous water spouts (fig. 1). At the top and the bottom of the cascades were fountains decorated with lead sculptures. In 1677, the amphitheatres seating the spectators were surrounded by 18 round rocaille pools, each with a spout of water reaching up to arcades of greenery planted between 1680 and 1688.

During the replanting ordered by Louis XVI in 1775, the very damaged Water Theatre was destroyed and the grove was replaced by the Round green (“Rond-vert”). The diagonal walks were prolonged to reach the central circular lawn area that gave the grove its name.

During the archaeological operation, twenty-three probes were made (fig. 2). The finest discovery was the central pool of the of the Water Theatre which separated the stage from the rest of the theatre, as well as several drystone drains for evacuating water and the floor of the theatre, the boundary walk and the entry. From the reign of Louis XVI only one drystone drain was discovered but though it crossed the grove it did not belong to the Round green.

Most of the archaeological materials found consisted of parts of the decorative rocaille stonework of the pools and cascades: millstone grit with brass wire, molten glass, pieces of quartz, common seashells rarely whole, and iron nails used to maintain the rocaille. Other finds were: shards of blue and white earthenware garden vases, some coins and tokens and above all a Neolithic polished axe head (fig. 3). Apart from this axe head, the finest object found was a magnificent exotic seashell, entire and still in place with its brass wire on one of the rims of the central pool of the Water Theatre (fig. 4).

Louis XV, who enjoyed the intimate life at Trianon, decided in 1749, at the instigation of the Marquise de Pompadour, to have a menagerie built beside this palace. The new menagerie, with a very different design to the one in Versailles, was to house not elephants or monkeys, but cows, chickens and sheep. To give variety to the royal visits, the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel added to this menagerie a garden, to be both decorative and provide vegetables, surrounding a summer pavilion for games, collations or concerts (the French Pavilion), that was completed in 1750. The following year a second and smaller pavilion was added top be used as a dining room, probably for serving the products of the dairy and market gardens.

In front of this second pavilion, called the Pavillon Frais, was a small garden surrounded by a rectangular portico of trellis work whose long side faced the pavilion (fig. 1 and fig. 2). On either side of the pavilion, the alignments of arcades were doubled to form two walks. The pilasters of the portico concealed the trunks of the lime trees and revealed only their foliage, trimmed to form balls. The two main pilasters framing the entry to the garden were surmounted like the pavilion with an entablature and large wooden baskets. Fifty-four other and smaller baskets decorated the clamps of the arcades between the pilasters. The whole structure was painted green.

The garden had two oval pools on the inner sides of two symmetrical rectangular flower beds whose outer sides had fan palms in the centre. The flower-beds and pools were framed by strips of flowers interrupted by small paths, and the centre was occupied by flower-beds set in a strip of lawn. The two pools were surrounded by slabs of Languedoc marble, like the chimney of the pavilion, paved with two-coloured stones and decorated with a water spout.

The Pavillon Frais was destroyed in 1810, its portico pulled down the following year and its pools filled in between 1830 and 1840 – according to a bottle with the coat of arms of Louis-Philippe found in one of them during the excavations (fig. 3). The restoration of the pavilion was begun in 1980, but was interrupted after the reconstruction of the building itself which has stood since then facing simple lawns and devoid of its trellis decoration. But the opportunity of sponsorship from America recently made it possible to replace this building in its garden and part of its trellis.

What this garden originally looked like is known, but mostly from estimates, and perhaps not all the details survived in the finished work. Moreover, the different plans of the project show the hesitations of the architect. So an excavation was undertaken to determine the exact siting of the different blocks of masonry. It involved at first only the eastern half of the garden, as this was symmetrical.

In 2006, a geophysical prospection method using electricity was carried out. This non-destructive method consists of studying the resistivity of the ground by passing an electric current through it. It was followed by three probes: the first on the site of the pool and the two others at the south-east and north-east corners of the portico. The overall site coverage of this half garden was thus discovered.

The pool was well preserved, with its outer wall, its potter’s clay bed, its drystone drain and, especially, its decorative paved floor (fig. 4). However, the inner wall of the pool had been levelled (probably to recover its stone slabs) and the lead piping had been removed, destroying part of the paving. Several fragments of the marble edge were found in the filling material. The foundations were found to be still in place in the two corner probes, as were those of the niche and the pedestal of the statue in the south-west corner.

The following year a more general excavation uncovered almost the entire foundations of the portico of the eastern half of the garden (fig. 5). It was completed in 2008 by a study of the still well-preserved timber platforms under the inner wall of the pool.

In 2009, an in-depth stratigraphic study revealed the different stages in the laying out of the garden. Then, before the restoration work began, the pool in the western section of the garden, in a much poorer state than the one in the eastern half, was excavated. The diggings revealed the pool, part of its drystone drain and the manhole where the valve activating the water spout was located. The configuration of this manhole showed that the two pools were supplied indirectly from the Trefle reservoir, bypassing the French Garden.

Archaeological probes were carried out in June and July 2008 in the Queen’s Grove. Their aim was to find the remains of the Labyrinth buried under the surface of the grove’s soil.

Begun by André Le Nôtre in 1665, this grove first consisted of a simple maze of walks cutting through the forest. A few years later, starting in 1672, and based on an a theme by Charles Perrault and in the literary context of the publication, in 1668, of the first books of the Fables of Aesop translated into verse by Jean de la Fontaine, this early composition was progressively enriched with decorative trellis structures and thirty-nine rocaille fountains.

The fountains illustrated some of Aesop’s fables with figures of animals cast in lead and painted with natural colours and the overall programme was completed in 1677. Already regarded as outdated at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, this composition progressively deteriorated during the 18th century and then, in 1778, following the major replanting of the park carried out for Louis XVI, it was replaced by a different composition greatly influenced by the new English taste: the Queen’s Grove.

A geophysical prospection was carried out before the probes were made (fig. 1). It determined five places where the presence of ancient stonework was perceptible. Five probes were then carried out in June, corresponding to these five structures:
Probe A: fountain of the fighting animals
Probe B: trellis pavilion
Probe C: fountain of the peacock and nightingale
Probe D: fountain of the wolf and the stork
Probe E: fountain of the hare and the tortoise

They all revealed traces of masonry or demolition rubble. After these probes, it was possible to make a more accurate superimposition of the plans of the Labyrinth on the current plan of the Queen’s Grove (fig. 2). This identified the location of the different fountains. Four other probes based on this superimposition were begun in early July (fig. 3).

Probe F: fountain of the cock and the fox
Probe G: fountain of the eagle, the rabbit and the dung beetle
Probe H: fountain of the rats’ council
Probe I: fountain of the wolf and the porcupine (fig. 3 and fig. 4)

The fountains had left their mark in the ground, though the vestiges discovered are not always easy to identify. Apart from stonework, the probes revealed in the demolition rubble some rocaille elements that decorated the pool edges and the supports of the lead sculptures of the fountains: shells, molten glass and coloured pebbles, copper sheets, millstone grit, etc. (fig. 5).