Shadows in the Parterre: The Fragrant Whispers of East and West

There she stood, silhouetted against the fading light, her silken scarf caught by the evening breeze. The Mughal princess moved deliberately through the moonlit garden, trailing her fingers across narcissus blooms still heavy with dew. The air was thick with jasmine, a fragrance so intense it seemed to pulse with each beat of her heart. This was no ordinary garden—it was a testament to power, an arena of sensory delight, a living poem expressed through the language of scent.

By the 18th century, the elaborate garden had become more than a physical space in North Indian literature—it had transformed into a complex literary device, a vehicle for cultural expression rendered in exquisite botanical detail. These verbal celebrations of luxury appeared with increasing frequency in Urdu narrative poems (masnavī), creating idealized scentscapes that spoke to sophisticated audiences well-versed in the language of flora.

In their scholarly analysis of garden descriptions in classical Urdu poetry, Emma Flatt and Katherine Butler Schofield note how these sensory spaces functioned as essential literary devices, with carefully selected botanical elements serving as signifiers of cultural sophistication.[^1] The elaborate descriptions of these gardens, both real and imagined, created textual landscapes where every plant carried cultural significance.

These literary gardens weren’t merely decorative backdrops but sensorially rich environments where identities were established, romances kindled, and political authority affirmed. The perfumed parterres of these narratives presented carefully curated collections of culturally significant plants, each carrying layers of meaning beyond their botanical properties.

In her work on South Asian garden culture, historian Bharti Lalwani observes that “these historical gardens combined aesthetics, botany, and politics in ways that continue to challenge our understanding of pre-colonial sensory environments.”[^2] Her research has pioneered methods for reconstructing these historical scentscapes through interdisciplinary approaches.

In the Mughal period particularly, gardens functioned as essential signifiers of social position and political power. They weren’t merely pleasant diversions but vital theatrical stages for elite life.

As James L. Wescoat Jr. explains in his seminal work on Mughal gardens, “The garden served as a manifestation of paradise on earth, a demonstration of the ruler’s power to create order from chaos, and a space where the sensory experience of plants reinforced hierarchies of taste and knowledge.”[^3] These extensive formal gardens, typically located outside urban centers, announced prosperity through their scale and sophistication.

Within their walls, the air itself became an instrument of power—perfumed with roses, narcissus, iris, and kewra, creating invisible boundaries of scent that marked privileged space. This olfactory dimension of garden design has received increasing scholarly attention, with researchers like Nicolas Roth of Harvard University emphasizing the central importance of fragrance in historical South Asian garden traditions.[^4]

When Urdu poets described these fragrant realms, they weren’t merely cataloging plants but invoking an entire cultural ecosystem. The bārahdarī (twelve-door pavilion), the hinḍolā (ceremonial swing), the banglā (cottage)—all existed within a carefully orchestrated sensory experience where fragrance played the leading role.

As scented gardens flourished in the literature of 18th-century North India, another fragrant revolution was unfolding thousands of miles away in the French countryside. The formal gardens of French châteaux—those rigidly geometric masterpieces that had dominated the previous century—were being questioned, reimagined, and slowly transformed.

The French garden had reached its apotheosis under Louis XIV at Versailles, where André Le Nôtre’s grand designs imposed human order upon nature with ruthless precision. These gardens were political statements written in boxwood and gravel—manifestations of absolute monarchy rendered in verdant form, their plantings arranged like courtiers in strict hierarchical formation.

In her authoritative history of European garden design, architectural historian Elizabeth Hyde describes how “the French garden was marked by mathematical precision and visual spectacle, creating landscapes that functioned simultaneously as outdoor architecture and political theater.”[^5] Yet by the mid-18th century, this rigidity was softening under new influences.

The scents of these formal gardens came primarily from their compartiments debroderie—intricate parterres resembling Persian carpets, where aromatic herbs and flowers were contained within precise geometric boundaries. Unlike their North Indian counterparts, these gardens privileged visual impact over olfactory experience, though both traditions recognized the garden as an essential expression of power.

As the century progressed, both French and Indian garden traditions underwent significant transformations. In France, the rigid formality of Versailles gradually yielded to the “picturesque” garden, influenced by English landscape design and philosophical changes sweeping through pre-revolutionary society.

Historians of French garden design like Monique Mosser have documented how writers such as the Marquis de Girardin and Claude-Henri Watelet championed gardens that appeared more natural while remaining carefully orchestrated experiences.[^6] The human desire to impose geometric order upon nature was being questioned, much as the absolute monarchy itself would soon face challenge.

One particularly fascinating development was the creation of ornamental “rustic villages” within these gardens. The Prince de Condé’s Hameau de Chantilly, completed in 1774, featured seven thatched-roof buildings modeled after a Norman farm. Garden historian Gabriel Wick has documented how, “while appearing rustic externally, their interiors were extraordinarily elegant—a theatrical juxtaposition of simplicity and luxury that would later inspire Marie Antoinette’s famous Hameau de la Reine at Versailles.”[^7]

These artificial villages, like the perfumed gardens of Mughal India, were carefully staged environments where fantasy and reality blurred. In both traditions, gardens had become theaters of sensation where scent played a crucial role in creating immersive experiences.

The final act of our story unfolds in the opulent drawing rooms of Gilded Age New York, where America’s industrial titans sought to establish cultural legitimacy through architectural appropriation. The newly minted millionaires of Manhattan—the Vanderbilts, Astors, and their contemporaries—turned to French châteaux for inspiration, importing not just architectural styles but entire rooms, gardens, and the scented traditions that accompanied them.

In her study of Franco-American cultural exchange during this period, art historian Wayne Craven observes that “during these decades, New York was seized by a passion for French architecture and decoration that transformed the city’s elite neighborhoods and established new standards of luxury in American domestic space.”[^8]

In 1889, George Washington Vanderbilt traveled to France with architect Richard Morris Hunt, embarking on a grand tour of châteaux that would inspire the design of Biltmore, his North Carolina estate. According to architectural historian John M. Bryan, they visited Blois, Chambord, and Chantilly, absorbing the architectural vocabulary of French aristocracy while laying the groundwork for America’s largest private residence.[^9]

The scented gardens that surrounded these American châteaux represented yet another translation of olfactory tradition. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the grounds at Biltmore, incorporated formal French parterres near the house before transitioning to more naturalistic landscapes beyond—creating a fragrant progression from civilization to wilderness that echoed America’s self-conception.

What connects these seemingly disparate garden traditions—the perfumed parterres of Mughal India, the geometric splendor of French châteaux, and the aspirational landscapes of Gilded Age America—is their recognition of scent as an essential component of cultural expression.

In each tradition, garden descriptions function as olfactory maps, guiding readers through carefully orchestrated sensory experiences. The Urdu poet who catalogs roses, jasmine, and narcissus is not merely listing plants but invoking an entire tradition of cultural meaning. Similarly, the French landscape architect who incorporates aromatic herbs into his parterres is working within a tradition that understands fragrance as an expression of refinement.

By the time these traditions reached American shores during the Gilded Age, they had become part of a global vocabulary of luxury—a language of scent that transcended national boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in specific cultural contexts.

The garden’s fragrance, unlike its physical form, cannot be contained within property lines. It drifts, mingles, and transforms, creating ephemeral connections between disparate spaces and times. Perhaps this explains why garden descriptions in literature so often focus on scent—it represents the garden’s soul, its most essential yet least tangible aspect.

As we inhale the fading echoes of these historical scentscapes, we connect momentarily with the sensory worlds of the past. The narcissus that perfumed a Mughal garden, the lavender that scented a French parterre, the roses that bloomed in a Gilded Age American estate—all speak to us across time through the universal language of fragrance, the most evocative yet mysterious of our senses.

In this invisible thread that connects East and West, past and present, we find perhaps the most enduring legacy of these garden traditions: their recognition that true luxury lies not in what can be seen and possessed, but in what can only be experienced—the ephemeral, ever-changing dance of scent upon the evening air.

[^1]: Daud Ali and Emma J. Flatt, eds., “Garden and Landscape Practices in Pre-Colonial India: Histories from the Deccan” (Routledge India, 2015).

[^2]: Bharti Lalwani, “Bagh-e Hind: Resurrecting Scentscapes of 17th & 18th Century India,” exhibition catalog (2021).

[^3]: James L. Wescoat Jr., “Landscapes of conquest and transformation: Lessons from the earliest Mughal gardens in India, 1526-1530,” Landscape Journal 10 (1991): 105-114.

[^4]: Nicolas Roth, contribution to “Bagh-e Hind: Scent Translations of Mughal and Rajput Garden Paintings” exhibition (2021-2022).

[^5]: Elizabeth Hyde, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 42.

[^6]: Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot, eds., “The History of Garden Design: The Western Tradition from the Renaissance to the Present Day” (Thames & Hudson, 2000).

[^7]: Joseph Disponzio, “Jean-Marie Morel and the Invention of Landscape Architecture,” in The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, ed. Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 359-369.

[^8]: Wayne Craven, “Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society” (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 115.

[^9]: John M. Bryan, “Robert Mills: America’s First Architect” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 72-78.