Pierre I Desgots ( – 1675) was a French gardener who helped to maintain and create

French formal garden The French formal garden, also called the (), is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the ...

s at the

Tuileries The Tuileries Palace (french: Palais des Tuileries, ) was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. It was the usual Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from ...

and the Palais-Cardinal in Paris.Rostaing 2001, p. 72. He was the brother-in-law of the famous French garden designer

André Le Nôtre André Le Nôtre (; 12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700), originally rendered as André Le Nostre, was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. He was the landscape architect who designed the gar ...

and the grandfather of the

landscape architect A landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water manageme ...

Claude Desgots Claude Desgots (or Desgotz; c. 1658 – 1732) was a French architect and landscape architect, who designed French formal gardens in France and England. He worked with and was strongly influenced by André Le Nôtre, the designer of the gardens a ...

Family

Pierre I Desgots was born in Paris around 1600. He was the son of Jean I Desgots, a plaster merchant. His older sister Marie Desgots (died 1675Bouchenot 2013, "Généalogie 6. Famille Desgots".) married Martin Bocquet, a gardener at the

Cours-la-Reine The Cours-la-Reine, also spelled Cours la Reine (without hyphens), is a public park and garden promenade located along the River Seine, between the Place de la Concorde and the Place du Canada, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, 8th arrondisseme ...

, a promenade created by Queen

Marie de' Medici Marie de' Medici (french: link=no, Marie de Médicis, it, link=no, Maria de' Medici; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV of France of the House of Bourbon, and Regent of the Kingdom ...

along the

Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributarie ...

. His older brother Jean II Desgots (died 1624) is recorded in a contract of 2 October 1616 as ''maître jardinier'' ('master gardener') and an associate of Jean Le Nôtre, father of

, at the garden of the Maison Feydeau,

Rue des Francs-Bourgeois Rue des Francs-Bourgeois () is one of the longer streets in the Marais district of Paris, France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions a ...

. From 1618, Jean II Desgots was ''jardinier du roi'' ('gardener of the king') at the

. Pierre I Desgots married Elisabeth (Ysabel) Le Nôtre, sister of André Le Nôtre, on 10 February 1625. The couple had a son, Pierre II Desgots (1630–1688), who also became a gardener and worked closely with André Lenôtre. After the death of Pierre I's wife in 1632, the inventory of her belongings listed garden tools and flowers, but no books. The flowers included

anemones ''Anemone'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family (biology), family Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers. They are Native plant, native to the Temperate climate, temperate and Subtropics, subtrop ...

tulips Tulips (''Tulipa'') are a genus of spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs). The flowers are usually large, showy and brightly coloured, generally red, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm ...

, white and yellow

daffodils ''Narcissus'' is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plant, perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil,The word "daffodil" is also applied to related genera such as ''Ste ...

, jonquils,

crocuses ''Crocus'' (; plural: crocuses or croci) is a genus of seasonal flowering plants in the family Iridaceae (iris family) comprising about 100 species of perennials growing from corms. They are low growing plants, whose flower stems remain undergro ...

, Persian tulips, hepatics, and

buttercups ''Ranunculus'' is a large genus of about almost 1700 to more than 1800 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus are known as buttercups, spearworts and water crowfoots. The genus is distributed in Europe, ...

, among others. Pierre I and his son resided on the Rue Saint-Vincent (now the Rue Saint-Roch) in the parish of

Saint-Roch, Paris The Church of Saint-Roch (french: Église Saint-Roch) is a 17th-18th-century French Baroque and classical style church in Paris, dedicated to Saint Roch. It is located at 284 rue Saint-Honoré, in the 1st arrondissement. The current church was ...

. In 1654, Pierre II married Martine Servelle (died 1670), and the couple had a son,

, who became an internationally famous

Career

Following in the footsteps of his older brother Jean, Pierre I Desgots became a ''maître jardinier''. He was probably employed in the maintenance of the garden created in 1608–1610 by Jean Le Nôtre at the Parisian '' hôtel'' of

Cardinal François de La Rochefoucauld Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...

. After the death of his brother Jean in 1624, Pierre succeeded him as ''jardinier ordinaire du roi'' at the Tuileries,Bouchenot 2013, note 141. where he received wages of 1200

livres The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 gr ...

for maintaining the

palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade' ...

s and alleys of the garden and park of the Tuileries and probably later created new alleys there in 1668–1670, when the garden was redesigned by André Le Nôtre. In 1629, he purchased an

arpent An arpent (, sometimes called arpen) is a unit of length and a unit of area. It is a pre-metric French unit based on the Roman ''actus''. It is used in Quebec, some areas of the United States that were part of French Louisiana, and in Mauritius ...

of land in with Simon Bouchard, gardener of the

orangery An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very large ...

of the Tuileries and the son-in-law of Jean Le Nôtre, and later built a house there. That same year, Jean Le Nôtre, Bouchard and Desgots created flower and

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...

'' parterres en broderie'' to a design by

Jacques Boyceau Jacques Boyceau, sieur de la Barauderie (ca. 1560 – 1633) was a French garden designer, the superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII of France, Louis XIII, whose posthumously produced ''Traité du iardinage selon les raisons de la n ...

at the Palais-Cardinal in Paris. On 18 November 1635, Desgots agreed to a contract for 1500 livres to level alleys and plant

hornbeam Hornbeams are hardwood trees in the flowering plant genus ''Carpinus'' in the birch family Betulaceae. The 30–40 species occur across much of the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Origin of names The common English name ''hornbeam' ...

in the same garden.Hazlehurst 1980, p. 188.

Notes

Bibliography

* Bouchenot-Déchin, Patricia (2013). ''André Le Nôtre'' (in French). Fayard. (ebook). * Garrigues, Dominique (2001). ''Jardins et jardiniers de Versailles au grand siècle''. Seyssel: Champ Vallon. . * Hazlehurst, F. Hamilton (1980). ''Gardens of Illusion: The Genius of André Le Nostre''. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press. . * Rostaing, Aurélia (2001). "Pierre II Desgots (1630–1688) et Claude Desgots (v. 1658 – 1732)", pp. 72–75, in ''Créaturs de jardins et de paysages en France de la Renaissance au XXIe siècle. Tome I: de la Renaissance au début du XIXe siècle'', edited by Michel Racine. École nationale supérieure du paysage. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Desgots, Pierre I French Baroque garden designers 1675 deaths