Ian Thompson. The Sun King's Garden : Louis XIV, Andre le Notre and the Creation  of the Gardens of Versailles. Bloomsbury 2006  Hardcover in DJ Very Good/Very Good  Quarto 370 pp

"At Versailles, twelve miles outside Paris, France' s self-styled " Sun King" created not only Europe' s most lavish palace, but, beginning in 1661, the most extensive gardens the Western world has ever seen. Assisting Louis in this enterprise was the low-born gardener Andre Le No tre, whose character and temperament were as different from those of his sovereign as it is possible to conceive. "