Rothschild Park
Photo: Traumrune / CC BY-SA 3.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in Rothschild Park was a Japanese-style garden created within the Château Rothschild estate at Boulogne-Billancourt. It was commissioned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild and designed by the Tokyo horticulturist Hatta / Hata Wasuke, who was engaged after Rothschild encountered Japanese ornamental plants at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900. Today the site forms part of the public Parc de Boulogne-Edmond-de-Rothschild.
History
The wider Rothschild estate at Boulogne developed from the nineteenth century, but the Japanese garden belongs to the early twentieth-century Japonisme phase. The Japanese Embassy in France identifies Hata Wasuke as the designer hired by Edmond de Rothschild to create a Japanese garden at Château Rothschild. A Boulogne park plan dates the Japanese garden specifically to 1900, while other public descriptions place Hatta’s work more broadly between 1900 and 1930 or before 1925.
Design features
The original Japanese garden included Japanese ornamental planting and garden objects, with later descriptions mentioning a pagoda and a tea-house-like kiosk. The surviving state is fragmentary: sources note that the original Japanese garden has largely disappeared or been destroyed, with trees and some stone remains surviving. Because of this, the site is best treated as a former Japanese garden with surviving remnants, not as a complete present-day Japanese garden.
Garden elements
Bridges
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Former / fragmentarily surviving Japanese garden within the public Parc de Boulogne-Edmond-de-Rothschild. The Japanese garden was created for Baron Edmond de Rothschild after he encountered Japanese ornamental plants at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition and employed the Japanese horticulturist Hatta / Hata Wasuke. The original garden no longer survives as a complete Japanese garden: later descriptions state that only remnants remain, especially mature trees and stone remains interpreted as former lantern bases. The wider Rothschild park is now a public municipal park in Boulogne-Billancourt, while the Japanese garden should be recorded as a historic Japanese garden site with surviving fragments rather than as a fully extant restored garden.