The invention of scientific horticulture
How the King's vegetable Garden was made out of marshland
Originally trained as a lawyer, Jean Baptiste La Quintinie thrives on reading ancient texts treating of horticulture (Columella, Virgil, Pliny…). His frequentation of salons displaying collections of curiosities and marvels of the time, as well as his personal observations, urge him to undertake his own experiments. He acquires a great reputation, working in the most beautiful parks – those of the castles of Rambouillet, Chantilly, Sceaux, or Vaux-le-Vicomte - until Louis XIV calls for him in Versailles. He is appointed “director of all the fruit and kitchen gardens of the royal family”.
La Quintinie endeavours to make the most of the existing kitchen garden, previously created by Louis XIII. But when the court settles in Versailles, this small kitchen garden is no longer sufficient.
Continuously anxious to embellish the royal estate, Louis XIV assigns new –unfortunately marshy – grounds. A big kitchen garden of 9 hectares is then created, right by the Swiss Guards lake, not far from the Orangery.
It will take five years, between 1678 and 1683, for La Quintinie to complete the masterpiece, which remains nearly unaltered today. Mansart build the walls and the masonry, whereas La Quintinie concentrated his efforts on improving the soil, which was “of the sort that one would rather find nowhere”. To solve the humidity of the soil, he constructed an underground aqueduct. In each part of the kitchen garden, dry-stone pipes ensured drainage. The soil was transported from the Satory hills and great quantities of fresh manure from the castle stables was mixed in. As for watering, Buc’s aqueduct provided the necessary water supply. It was first stored in an exterior tank before being spilled out into the central basin of the kitchen garden.
Thirty gardens were originally spread around the central Grand Square and would shelter espalier-trained fruit trees behind their high walls. Only less than twenty subsist today, yet the initial concept of a succession of protected rooms, favouring microclimates as well as diversity of exposures remains unchanged.
As initially planned, the Grand Square of 3 hectares is composed of sixteen smaller squares surrounded by counter-espalier grown pear trees. It contains about fifty species and varieties of vegetables including traditional vegetables and also condiments, gourds, pear-shaped tomatoes, “kilometer” beans, Jerusalem artichokes or ancient vegetables.
The pruning of some 5000 fruit trees requires an extensive number of hours of work to train wall-trees (espaliers) or to fix them on trellises (counter-espaliers, which have replaced La Quintinie’s round-headed trees by the XVIIIth century).
Despite the persistent legend, there are no longer any trees planted by La Quintinie in the kitchen garden today. Yet the entire team of gardeners maintains the spirit of his garden by cultivating or reintroducing varieties which he was very fond of, such as the Winter “Bon Chrétien” pear or “Téton de Vénus” peach.
The actual shape of the garden has barely changed in three centuries: if the “Figuerie”, “the Melonnière”, “the Prunelaye” and the “Jardin Biais” have disappeared, other plots have replaced them and other crops have appeared.
Regarded as an agricultural theater, the King’s kitchen garden is, from the start, a place of experimentation. La Quintinie and his successors have mastered the art of producing early, out of season fruits and vegetables. Thanks to very creative and inventive techniques such as cold frames, bell-glasses and layers of warm manure to protect the productions, the gardeners were able to supply Louis XIV with figs for six months, strawberries in January, peas in April and asparagus in December. Seven hundred container-grown fig trees protected by mulch, manure and cold frames, were sheltered during winter, in a building still known as the “Figuerie”.. As early as June, fresh figs could therefore be served to the King. La Quintinie can be considered as a precursor for producing early fruits and vegetables as well as out of season productions, so common nowadays. These wonders contributed to the kitchen garden’s reputation throughout Europe. Louis XIV often invited his court for a walk in the kitchen garden: from the height of the terraces, he would observe the work of the gardeners and would not refuse to take a few lessons with this gardener, whom he thought so highly of.
When La Quintinie died, in 1688, Louis Le Normand is the first one of a family who will manage the kitchen garden until 1782. He constructed the first glasshouses, Dutch glasshouses that appeared in France at the end of Louis XIV’s reign. Leaning against walls to protect the plants from northern exposure, they made possible the acclimatization of tropical vegetation such as pineapples, coffee, bananas and other exotic plants brought by travellers. The production of pineapple for example, which started in 1733 and continued throughout the Revolution, comprised some eight hundred plants. It was only interrupted by the XXth century. Likewise for the dozen coffee plants introduced in the King’s kitchen garden in the middle of the XVIIIth century, for which Louis XV showed great pride.
The invention of scientific horticulture
The XVIIIth century is also the time for developments and works in the kitchen garden: The Eleven gardens in which the compartmentalization does not allow for sufficient ventilation and in which the cold and heavy grounds remain too humid, are enlarged in 1785 and brought down to five more spacious gardens by removing six of the dividing walls. At the same period, two terraces -of Sunrise and Sunset, are transformed into ramps to ease the circulation of carts.
At the forefront of horticulture, the King’s kitchen garden was the first one to adopt the thermo-siphon heating process for the glasshouses. The richness of the plant collections and the modernity of the horticultural techniques have been the assets of the King’s kitchen garden: during the royal power’s absence, educational establishments settled in, “Ecole Centrale” during the Revolution, “Institut National” in 1848, and then the “Horticulture” School in 1873. These various episodes have influenced the kitchen garden’s production towards a collection of various species and fruit forms.
Despite the political tribulations and the public financing’s ups and downs, the King’s kitchen garden has remained a place of production for more than three centuries. Today, the gardeners grow approximately three hundred fruit varieties, mostly pears and apples. The pear has always been a remarkable fruit of the kitchen garden. La Quintinie who had listed more than two hundred varieties, recommended above all, the winter “Bon Chrétien”. Each year, an average of thirty tons of vegetables and fifty tons of fruits are harvested and sold on premises or transformed in fruit juice or jam. Trees are trained to grow in as many as thirty different shapes, often spectacular, fan-shaped espalier, double framed U, cross-shaped, etc., proof of the exceptional knowledge. The National Superior Landscape Architecture School which inhabits the place, trains, since 1976, landscape architects (to a state recognized diploma) for whom the King’s kitchen garden remains a reference in garden history.
