Kitchen garden of the king

The Potager of the king is the Vegetable garden created in 1683 with the Château of Versailles (work spread out of 1678 to 1683) for the king Louis XIV by Jean-Baptiste of Quintinie, then director of the royal gardens. It extends on 9 Hectare S.

The site chosen, unfavorable to the establishment of a kitchen garden, required important work to drain the preexistent marsh, the “puant pond”, and to embank the ground with ground of good quality coming from the hills of Satory. Important work of masonry, for the construction of terraces and high walls, was completed by the architect Mansart. The kitchen garden is beside the water part of Swiss, not far from the Orangerie. The king entered there by a monumental wrought iron door, the “grid of the king” who gives on the alley of water the Pièce of Swiss the.

This garden is composed of two parts:

a central part devoted to the culture of the Vegetable S, the “great square” of a surface of three hectares. It is divided into sixteen squares laid out around a large decorated circular basin of a jet of water central, which is used as concerning the water of watering, and surrounded by four elevated terraces which transform it into a kind of theatrical scene. The squares are surrounded by Poirier S trained on cordons. At the end of the 18th century, the terraces of raising and setting were transformed into slopes to facilitate the circulation of the carts.
distributed around and closed high walls, a dozen (twenty-nine at the origin) gardens, sheltering fruit trees, Apple tree S and Pear tree S mainly, trained partly in Rib stall S on the walls. In 1785, six walls were removed in the southern, too wet and insufficiently aired part, letting remain only five gardens instead of eleven.

The kitchen garden of the king, who has a Verger few 5000 fruit trees, year in year out produces approximately 50 tons of fruits and 20 tons of vegetables, of which a part is sold in the shop of reception.

Classified historic building in 1926, the kitchen garden of the king is opened with the public since 1991 (visit the every day of 10:00 to 18:00, of the first weekend of April at the last weekend of October). The kitchen garden sheltered successively the Central École at the time of the Revolution, the National institute in 1848, then the School of Horticulture in 1873. This one became thereafter the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of horticulture (SNSH), transferred to Angers in 1995 (today INH (National institute of horticulture and the landscape). It is placed since 1976 under the responsibility of the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the landscape (ENSP), which was in the beginning a division of ENSH.

See too

Garden | Castle of Versailles

External bonds

the kitchen garden of the king, site of the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of landscape (ENSP)
Seen air of the Kitchen garden on Google Maps

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