Where do authors of historical fiction get their writing inspiration? Inspiration for my historical novels and French chateau gardens often comes to me while working in my garden.

Garden Ideas for Writing a French Historical Novel

Writing about an aristocratic French family can include myriad ideas involved with creating the main character of the novel. Ideas come from dreaming, imagining, observing nature, etc. Let’s say you dream of walking through a rose garden owned by wealthy and cultivated French people in Southern France. This could spark an idea for a chapter about the history, maintenance, and use of your main character’s own family garden.

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Writing Ideas from Real Life Travels of Gardens

Ideas from real life, present day, travels are endless. Have you visited a magnificent chateau with a lavender garden on a French countryside for the first time? Weave your feeling of awe by the beautiful garden and into story lines.

Your own secret dream of beginning a new life as a garden travel writer could spark ideas. Create a dazzling novel of intrigue about a young woman who grew up in the medieval ages. Use your garden travels for inspiration in writing about the woman’s childhood home that was a medieval fortress.

Perhaps you dream of taking a botanical journey in the United States or see the lush gardens of lavender in the south of France. Visit Huntington Library in Southern California to see the gorgeous botanical gardens. And if you’re planning a trip to the south of France, include the popular French Riviera (la Côte d’azur) as you can read about in about-France.com.

Visit the Actual Place of Your Setting

Visit the actual place of your setting for an authentic feeling of what it’s like to be there. Go to an outdoor fruit and vegetable market or sit in a popular garden of the area.

Authors of the best books in historical fiction may not have visited the place of their novels’ actual settings. But they created great authenticity of time and place either through extensive research of the geographical region or visiting the actual place.

Historical Fiction Writing Inspiration for French Chateau Gardens

You can see in my French Connection historical fiction series that I’m inspired by gardens. Included below is a list of types of gardens that were popular in 17th and 18th Century French chateau gardens. Similarly, American gardens of today continue to favor these same styles.

• kitchen gardens
• formal gardens
• borders
• water gardens
• lilies
• forget-me-not
• symmetry
• pathways
• fountains
• botanical
• topiaries

Check out additional garden-inspired short posts, including personally photographed flower pictures, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lizpyebooks/.

Research Famous Gardens When Writing about French Historical Fiction

Research famous French gardens, such as Le Potager du Roi. The King’s Kitchen Garden provided fruit and vegetables for King Louis XIV in Versailles in the 17th century. The garden included 50 varieties of pears, 20 varieties of apples, and France’s first pineapples were produced at the Potager in the 1730s. 

The garden became a school for horticulture and landscape architecture with the French Revolution, but the National School of Landscape Architecture runs the Potager now.

Kitchen gardening in the 17th and 18th centuries was similar as it is today. For example, trees provide barriers to wind and harsh weather. Additionally, vegetables and herbs are used for flavor, medicinal, or perfume use and help discourage insects from destroying plants.

Inspiration from the Gardens of Brécy

Research famous gardens like the Brécy, an example of the 17th Century formal garden, located in France and close to the English Channel. Brécy is characteristic of garden settings that I was inspired to write in The French Connection Series. As described by the editors of francetoday.com, the village is located five miles south of Gold Beach and is “partially hidden in its own diminutive vale.” 

Inspiration from the Gardens of Versailles

Read about The Gardens of Versailles when researching gardens. These gardens were “part of what was once the Domaine royale de Versailles, the royal demesne (or domain) of the château of Versailles.”

Financial status determined the size and vegetable choices of the garden. Because the nobility could afford extravagance, the best vegetable plants and rare ornamental flowers were planted in their gardens. On the other hand, small peasant gardeners used the least expensive fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

The Versailles palace gardens were expansive, as shown in this quote: “Palace records from 1686 show that the Palace used 20,050 jonquil bulbs, 23000 cyclamen, and 1700 lily plants.”

Community Gardening

The nobility showed off their luxurious chateau gardens, and large landowners hired farmhands to maintain their gardens. However, the rural peasants shared community gardening resources. “All the peasants in a rural farming area required the community to exist,” Elizabeth Aaker wrote in a study on 18th Century French Peasantry communities.

Grow a Garden for Inspiration

Grow a garden, or design a beautiful landscape with formal symmetry for inspiration to write historical fiction. This can be done without going overboard on a budget. 

In today’s society, you don’t have to own a palace to grow the best vegetables, flowers, or garden. But in reality, you do need to be able to afford the water bill or live in an area with plenteous rain. However, you can enjoy a small garden by participating in a community garden, or grow a tiny kitchen garden if you’re limited on space. 

Gardening, incidentally, is a great hobby to choose for inspiration as well as for health purposes. After all, who can ignore the beauty and breathtaking scents of an ornate flower garden?

French Connection Historical Fiction

Take a minute to check out my French Connection historical fiction series on Amazon.

The quotes below are from Return to Chateau Fleury:

• A gentleman, dressed as a tree, offered one of his branches to Helene and bowed before her. ‘Mademoiselle, may I escort you to the garden for a breath of fresh air . . . and whatever the evening may bring?’
• Helene disengaged her arm from his grasp. ‘I’m not feeling botanical tonight,’ she said emphatically and turned away from him to Marie.
• “La vie est une fleur dont l’amour est le miel.” – Victor Hugo. English translation: “Life is a flower of which love is the honey.”

Read more about historical fiction writing inspiration by Elizabeth Pye at https://www.facebook.com/lizpyebooks/