Three little-known botanical gardens at Versailles (1762–1851): a comparative analysis of their projects and of the social and intellectual trajectory of their founders

Abstract

If the botanical significance of the Trianon gardens during the reign of Louis XV is relatively well known, three other ‘botanical gardens’ at Versailles — created, cultivated and finally dismantled between 1762 and 1851 — seem to have received very little, if any attention (figure 4.1). About 1762, Louis Guillaume Lemonnier, Professor of Botany at the Jardin du Roi in Paris and participant in the creation of the Trianon gardens, created his personal botanical garden in Versailles' Montreuil neighbourhood. At the end of the century, in 1798, the former Potager du Roi, the King's kitchen garden, was transformed into a botanical garden, based on a project by Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, a professor of natural history. And in 1834, François-Haken Philippar, a gardener who became Professor of Horticulture and Applied Botany at the Institut Agronomique de Grignon, founded a public botanical garden adjacent to the town hall.