Paris today has more than 421 municipal parks and gardens, covering more than three thousand hectares and containing more than 250,000 trees.Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens Two of Paris's oldest and most famous gardens are the Tuileries Garden, created in 1564 for the Tuileries Palace, and redone by André Le Nôtre in 1664; and the Luxembourg Garden, belonging to a château built for Marie de' Medici in 1612, which today houses the French Senate. The Jardin des Plantes was the first botanical garden in Paris, created in 1626 by Louis XIII's doctor Guy de La Brosse for the cultivation of medicinal plants. Between 1853 and 1870, the Emperor Napoleon III and the city's first director of parks and gardens, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, created the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes, Parc Montsouris and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, located at the four points of the compass around the city, as well as many smaller parks, squares and gardens in the neighborhoods of the city. One hundred sixty-six new parks have been created since 1977, most notably the Parc de la Villette (1987–1991) and Parc André Citroën (1992).

Some of the most notable recent gardens of Paris are not city parks, but parks belonging to museums, including the gardens of the Rodin Museum and the Musée du quai Branly or smaller intimate gardens of the Musée Delacroix or Musée de la Vie romantique.

From Roman times through the Middle Ages

Gardens existed in Paris in Roman times and the Middle Ages, either to produce fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs; for the meditation of monks; or for the pleasure of the nobility; but no trace remains of the original gardens of the Roman town of Lutetia.

The royal palace on the Île de la Cité had a walled garden located at the southern point of the palace, near where the statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf is today. The garden disappeared when the Place Dauphine was built in the early 17th century.Meunier, Florian, Le Paris du Moyen Âge, pp. 37–38

The monasteries on the left bank had extensive gardens and orchards from the Middle Ages until the French Revolution. The Jardin des Plantes was built on land that originally belonged to the Abbey of Saint Victor. and a large part of the Luxembourg Garden today belonged to the neighboring monastery of the Chartreux. A small modern recreation of a medieval garden is found today next to the Cluny Museum, the former residence of the abbot of the Abbey of Cluny.

Renaissance Gardens and Gardens a la Française (1564-1700) In 1495, King Charles VIII and his nobles imported the Renaissance garden style from Italy after their unsuccessful Italian War of 1494–1498. The new French Renaissance garden was characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterres; plants in pots; paths of gravel and sand; terraces; stairways and ramps; moving water in the form of canals, cascades and monumental fountains, and extensive use of artificial grottoes, labyrinths and statues of mythological figures. They also featured a long axis perpendicular to the palace, with bodies of water and a view of the whole garden, They were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome. The French kings imported not only the ideas, but also Italian gardeners, landscape architects, and fountain-makers to create their gardens. The first examples in France were far from Paris, where there was more space for big gardens; the gardens of the royal Château d'Amboise (1496), the Château de Blois (c. 1500), Château de Fontainebleau (1528), and the Château de Chenonceau (1521), with additions by Catherine de' Medici in 1560.

In the mid-17th century, under Louis XIV, the French formal garden, or Jardin à la française, gradually replaced the Renaissance style garden; it was more formal and geometric, and symbolized the dominance of the King over nature. The most famous example was the gardens of Versailles, made by André Le Nôtre beginning in 1661. Le Nôtre remade the Tuileries Gardens in the new style beginning in 1664.

Jardins des Tuileries (1564)

The first royal garden of the Renaissance in Paris was the Jardin des Tuileries, created for Catherine de' Medici in 1564 to the west of her new Tuileries Palace. It was inspired by the gardens of her native Florence, particularly the Boboli Gardens, and made by a Florentine gardener, Bernard de Carnesecchi. The garden was laid out along the Seine, and divided into squares of fruit trees and vegetable gardens divided by perpendicular alleys and by boxwood hedges and rows of cypress trees. Like Boboli, it featured a grotto, with faience "monsters" designed by Bernard Palissy, whom Catherine had assigned to discover the secret of Chinese porcelain.Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 46

Under Henry IV, the old garden was rebuilt, following a design of Claude Mollet, with the participation of Pierre Le Nôtre, the father of the famous garden architect. A long terrace was built on the north side, looking down at the garden, and a circular basin was constructed, along with an octagonal basin on the central axis.

In 1664 he garden was remade again by André Le Nôtre in the style of the classic French formal garden, with parterres bordered with low shrubs and bodies of water organized along a wide central axis. He added the Grand Carré around the circular basin at the east end of the garden, and the horseshoe-shaped ramp at the west end, leading to a view of the entire garden.

In 1667, Charles Perrault, the author of Sleeping Beauty and other famous fairy tales, proposed to Louis XIV that the garden be opened at times to public. His proposal was accepted, and the public (with the exception of soldiers in uniform, servants and beggars) were allowed on certain days to promenade in the park.Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 47

Cours-la-Reine (Cours-Albert-I) (1616)

The Cours-la-Reine (part of which today is named Cours-Albert-I after the King of Belgium during the First World War) was created by Marie de' Medici, who, like Catherine de' Medici, was nostalgic for her native Florence It was a long promenade (1.5 kilometers) along the Seine originally planted in with four long rows of elm trees. Built before the Champs Elysees, it was a popular promenade for the nobility, on foot or on horseback.

Place Royale (now Place des Vosges) (1605–1612) Place Royale (renamed Place des Vosges in 1800) is a residential square and public park ordered by Henry IV and built between 1605 and 1612. In his ordinance, the King called for "a place to promenade for the residents of Paris who are closely pressed together in their houses."Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens p. 56 The square was 108 meters long on each side, and lined with houses of the same height and in the same style. The center of the square was empty until 1639, when it was filled with an equestrian statue of Louis XIII. The square was divided in flower beds and lawns by diagonal alleys. The statue was destroyed during the French Revolution, then replaced with a new statue in 1822 during the Restoration. Four fountains were added in 1840.

Place Dauphine (1607) and Square du Vert-Galant (1884)

Place Dauphine was the second planned residential square, after the Place-Royale, built by order of Henry IV. It was located on the southern point of the Île de la Cité, on the site of the garden of the old royal palace. It was named for the future King Louis XIII, and was built in the shape of triangle, with the point touching the Pont Neuf, which had been finished in 1606. A statue of Henry IV on horseback was placed on the bridge at the entrance to the square in 1614, at the suggestion of his widow, Marie de' Medici. The original statue was destroyed during the French Revolution, but was replaced by a new statue in 1821.

The construction of the bridge joined two small islands to the Île de la Cité; one of these islands, the Île aux Juifs, had been the site where the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques DeMolay had been burned at the stake in 1314. The point of the island below the bridge and the statue of Henry IV was turned into a public park in 1884, the Square du Vert Galant. It took its name from the nickname of Henry IV of France, famous for his romantic affairs.

Jardin des Plantes (1626)

The Jardin des Plantes, originally called the Jardin royal des herbes médicinales, was opened in 1626, under the supervision of Guy de La Brosse, the physician of King Louis XIII. Its original purpose was to provide medicinal plants for the court. It was built on land purchased from the neighboring Abbey of Saint Victor. A labyrinth and belvedere from 1840 can still be seen in the northwest section of the garden. In 1640, it became the first Paris garden to open to the public.

In the eighteenth century, under the French natural scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who directed it from 1739 to 1788, the garden was doubled in size by an exchange of land with the Abbey, extending down to the banks of the Seine, and was greatly expanded with the addition of trees and plants brought by French explorers from around the world. It contains a Robinia tree planted in 1636, and a sophora from 1747.

In 1793, after the Revolution, the royal garden became the National Museum of Natural History, and a zoo was added. with animals brought from the Palace of Versailles. The garden was expanded again, and a school of botany founded. The first greenhouse was built in 1833 by Charles Rohault de Fleury, a pioneer in the use of iron in architecture. The first of the large greenhouses seen today was built by Jules André in 1879; the greenhouse of cactuses by Victor Blavette in 1910; and the tropical greenhouse, 55 meters long, by René Berger in 1937. The alpine garden was added in 1931, and the rose garden and the Jardin des vivaces were added in 1964.Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, pp. 59–63.

Jardin du Luxembourg (1630)

The Jardin du Luxembourg was created by Marie de' Medici, the widow of Henry IV between 1612 and 1630. It was placed behind the Luxembourg Palace, an imitation of the Pitti Palace in her native Florence. She began by planting two thousand elm trees, and commissioned a Florentine gardener, Tommaso Francini, to build the terraces and parterres, and the circular basin the center. The Medici Fountain was probably also the work of Francini, though it is sometimes attributed to Salomon de Brosse, the architect of the palace. After Marie de' Medici's death, the garden was largely neglected. The last royal owner was the Count de Provence, the future King Louis XVIII, who sold the eastern part of the garden for building lots.

After the French Revolution, the government of the French Directory nationalized the large pépiniére, or nursery, of the neighboring monastery of Chartreux, and attached it to the garden. In 1862, during the Second Empire, Georges-Eugène Haussmann replanted and restored the gardens, but also took a portion of the nursery in order to make room for two new streets, Rue Auguste Comte and Place André Honnorat. The Medici fountain was moved back to make room for the Rue de Medicis, and the present long basin and the statuary were added to the fountain.

During the reign of Louis-Philippe, who was fond of heroes of French history, the garden was decorated with the statues of the Queens of France and French women saints. During the French Third Republic, the government added the statues of writers, painters, composers, mythical figures, and a miniature of the Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. bringing the number of statues to more than seventy.Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, pp. 65–70

Jardin du Palais-Royal (1629)