The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-07-17 00:00:00

THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES.
(From the Pictorial World.)

The history of the gardens of Versailles is, so to
speak, the history of the chateau, but each of their
parts has passed through various transitions which it is
useful to know. The great park of the chateau, was,
as everybody knows, created by Le Notre, who had
already designed the park of the Chateau of Vaux,
belonging to Fouquet. The creation of the park of
Versailles was a veritable triumph; it originated a
remarkable type, which has been justly called the
iardin francais. Louis XIV., who was very fond of
orange-trees, caused to be constructed at Trianon a
glass gallery where orange-trees, jasmines, and rose-
trees were planted in beds; and, later, the great
orangery which we admire at the present day.
This vast building, of which Mansard directed
the construction, was finished in 1687 ; it cost
1,551,645 livres, and the orange-trees which were
placed in it cost 85,869 'lyres. Amongst these orange.
trees is yet to be seen the "Grand Constable," which
Catherine de Foix, wife of John 111. of Albret, king
of Navarre, sent as a present, at the commencement of
the sixteenth century to Anne of Brittany, wife of
Louis XII. Under Louis XV. the architect Mique
was charged with the work of designing the garden of
the Petit Trianon. He adopted the landscape style,
wholly different to that created by Le Notre. This
garden ifrone the finest types of the jardin anglais—
intersected with winding paths, decorated with rustic
constructions. It became the scene of the most beauti-
ful fetes given by Louis XV. and Louis XVI. It was
upon this model that the Jardin du. Roi was laid out in
1816 in the great park, upon a soft marshy soil.
mm Be-
sides the pleasure gardens, the doa of Versailles
possesses other features—less brilliant perhaps, but of
very great utility. A large and important nursery garden
has been attached to the Grand Trianon for more than
a century; this nursery was the cradle of several
kinds of trees very common at the present
day. There, in fact, were sown the first seeds
of the tulip tree. which La Galissoniere im-
ported from Virginia in 1732; and there was planted
the first plane-tree which Louis XV. obtained from
England in 1751. The king's kitchen garden was
created under Louis XIII., in the Rue des Recollets.
It was restored, or rather remade, under Louis XIV.,
'by De la Quintinie, the Father of Gardens, as they
called him, in the seventeenth century—commenced in
1679 and finished in 1613; it. extended over eleven
hectares, and cost 1,170,983 livres. This large and
beautiful garden has been admirably divided, with
the view of having espaliers in all possible aspects. The
central part, bordered by four great terraces, is enclosed
by walls covered with fruit-trees; it is devoted to vege-
tables and plants growing akainst espaliers. A fine
plot of young pear-treas is situated at the west, near the
Piece d'eau des Suisses ; the northern part is occupied
by frames and greenhouses, which serve for the cul-
tivation of early fruit and vegetables. The varieties
of flowers and of fruits which were cultivated for
the first time in France in the king's kitchen garden
are innumerable, and we shall only cite one example.
Louis XV. having received, in 1753, from America
two suckers of the pineapple, had them placed in the
kitchen garden. Lenormand the younger had the
satisfaction, on the 24th December, 3735, of offering to
the king the two first fruits which had ripened in
France. This beautiful garden, well-known through-
out Europe, has preserved until our own days its first
splendour. It is impossible for visitors not to admire
, the art and science which have been devoted both to
the natural and forced cultivation of fruit and other
trees and plants. The new School of Horticulture,
which the French Government has recently established
at Versailles, could not have better models to show to
its pupils. An extensive taste for, and trade in
flowers have existed at Versailles for two centuries.
In the last century the horticulturists of Versailles,
amongst whom was the famous Abbe Sieves,
devoted themselves principally to the multiplication of
tulips, daisies, anemone, and auriculas—plants which
were greatly in vogue then. More recently they
cultivated successively rosea, heaths, fuchsias, vervains,
cinerarias, geraniums, &c. During the last forty years
they have cultivated specially camellias, rhododen-
drons, yuccas, evergreens for the decoration of rooms,
and the more beautiful of the conifera introduced
from Spain, Asia Minor, China, Australia and Cali-
fornia. The cultivation of vegetables occupies large
areas at Montreuil and the plain of Glatigny ; it only
comprises ordinary vegetables, but it is carried out
with so much ability, that the kitchen gardeners of
Montreuil have become the rivals of those of Paris.

We don't know whether much poetry is to be got out
of cold weather. At all events there's plenty of rime !
Judy.