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 "Landscape architecture, landscape" garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed ...

s at the

Tuileries The Tuileries Palace (, ) was a palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the Seine, directly in the west-front of the Louvre Palace. It was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henri IV to Napoleon III, until it was b ...

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 Gardens ...

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 manage ...

Claude Desgots.

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. It is one of ...

, a promenade created by Queen

Marie de' Medici Marie de' Medici (; ; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV. Marie served as regent of France between 1610 and 1617 during the minority of her son Louis XIII. Her mandate as rege ...

along the

Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plat ...

. 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 The Rue des Francs-Bourgeois () is one of the longer streets in the Marais district of Paris, France. Starting near the Centre Georges Pompidou (Rue Rambuteau), the road is considered trendy, with numerous fashion boutiques. The Rue des Francs- ...

. 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 Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers. They are native to the temperate and subtropical regions of all regions except Australia, New Zealand, and ...

tulips Tulips are spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes in the ''Tulipa'' genus. Their flowers are usually large, showy, and brightly coloured, generally red, orange, pink, yellow, or white. They often have a different coloure ...

, white and yellow

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

, 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 Liverworts are a group of non-vascular land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta (). They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry onl ...

, and

buttercups ''Ranunculus'' is a large genus of about 1750 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus are known as buttercups, spearworts and water crowfoots. The genus is distributed worldwide, primarily in temperate an ...

, 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 (, ) 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 built between 1653 a ...

. In 1654, Pierre II married Martine Servelle (died 1670), and the couple had a son, Claude Desgots, 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. 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 Livre may refer to: Currency * French livre, one of a number of obsolete units of currency of France * Livre tournois, one particular obsolete unit of currency of France * Livre parisis, another particular obsolete unit of currency of France * F ...

for maintaining the

palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymo ...

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 is a room or dedicated building, historically where orange and other fruit trees are protected during the winter, as a large form of greenhouse or conservatory. In the modern day an orangery could refer to either ...

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 and boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost So ...

'' 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 plant genus ''Carpinus'' in the family Betulaceae. Its species occur across much of the temperateness, temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Common names The common English name ''hornbeam'' derives ...

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 People from Paris