Design for a pleasure garden, printed in two sheets

Engraving, with a garden design, part of an album with with 30 plates (mostly folded) of garden designs created by André Mollet and dedicated to Queen Kristina of Sweden. The album intends to provide inspiration for garden designers in France and Sweden in the creation of flower beds, groves, and other garden decorations.The first design in the series consists of two plates, presenting a plan for a pleasure garden, to be created in the back of a palace or country cottage. The first plate illustrates the part of the garden that would be closer to the building, of rectangular shape, while the second, whose elements overlap partially with those on the first plate, illustrates the area of the garden further away from the palace, ending on a semi-circular space. The space closest to the building consists of two square areas made up of four triangular parterres around a circular fountain with a , flanked above by four rectangular parterres: two parterres of boxwood embroideries, in the center, and two 'compartiments de gazon' or 'grass designs', made up of surfaces of grass cut into patterns and accentuated with hedges, flowers, and different kinds of ground cover, on the sides. Mollet suggests in the text of chapter 11 that wooden garden houses or fountains could be built in the center of these parterres. Above the rectangles with boxwood embroideries are two additional rectangles with grass designs, flanked to the sides by rectangular spaces filled with rows of trees. Flanking the two upper 'compartiments de gazon' is a larger, semi-circular parterre with a fountain in the center. The garden is enclosed by a rectangular frame, possibly made of a canal of water, and by an outer space with two double-rows of trees, separated by a path.