Louis Benech

Landscape Architect


Louis Benech has always loved plants, and that got him interested in gardening.


After getting his Master of Laws, he found a gardener job in England in the famous Hillier Arboretum. Then he accepted a job as a gardener in a private estate in Normandy, and finally began his career as a landscape architect in 1985.


In 1990 in cooperation with Pascal Cribier and François Roubaud he worked on the project of reconstructing the old part of Tuileries. Since then he worked in many gardens, such as the park of the Élysée Palace, the garden of the French Foreign Ministry, the Courson garden, the rose garden at Pavlovsk in St. Petersburg, the imperial Achilleion Palace in Corfu, quadrangular lawns in front of the National Archives, the park at the castle of Chaumont-sur-Loire and others. In May 2015 the Palace of Versailles opened Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau, a modern project created by Benech as part of an international competition. The bosquet occupies the area of 1.5 hectares at the foot of the palace and overlooks the André Le Nôtre Park.


As of today, he and his team that has grown to include ten people, have developed and built several hundreds of parks and gardens, public and private, from Korea to Panama, in Peru, Canada, the US, Portugal, Greece or Morocco, working for individuals of all nationalities or major institutions such as Hermès, Axa or Suez.


Louis Benech, who adores working with plants, is quite inventive when it comes to saving the time of those who take care of the garden: each of them is a unique project that fits with the location and the architecture of the building.


Mr. Benech is a co-founder of the Specialized Collection of Plant Species; Member of the Royal Horticultural Society; Member of the London Gardeners Trusts Association; Member of the International Dendrological Society (1987); Member Expert of the Information Center for Garden Trends since its inception in 2002. He was awarded the titled of the Honored Worker of Arts in 2006-2007 by Source Association (for creating an “extraordinary garden” with children). Louis Benech was a Member of CNPJ (National Council of Parks and Gardens under the Ministry of Culture) from 2007 to 2013; Member of the Selection Committee of Plants Days in Courson; Member of the judge panel of the P.J. Redouté Prize; and Chairman of the judge panel at Garden Festival in Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2008. He also shared the Equerre d’Argent Prize for Cité des Métiers Hermès project in Panti.


He is a Cavalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor, and Cavalier of the Order of Arts and Literature.