This article highlights a 17th-century French herbal on Indian plants that is today preserved in the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle’s library in Paris. It was created in Orissa for the French East India Company servant Nicolas L’Empereur who gleaned much knowledge from local fakirs. The writer compares the Jardin with older and contemporary European manuscripts on Asian natural history, analysing the style in which artists from Chandernagore were trained to illustrate its pages.