Le Pois, C'est Moi

Beyond the grandeur of Versailles, Louis XIV's secret garden blooms again, and not just for a T&C haute couture fairy tale Today the Potager du Roi may just hold the key to the preservation of historic gardens everywhere.

- CAROLINE WEBER

Few visitors to Versailles today realize that in its heyday under Louis XIV the palace’s dazzling architectural splendors and matchless artistic treasures were often eclipsed by the products of the Potager du Roi, the Sun King’s 23-acre kitchen garden on the palace grounds. Green peas, for instance, were in 17th-century France a delicacy, a much coveted Italian import comparable to truffles today. And thanks to the efforts of the Potager’s visionary chief gardener, Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, they became a highlight of Louis’s banquets and an obsession of his court. “The craze for peas continues apace,” the Marquise de Maintenon reported in 1696. “The anticipation of eating them, the pleasure of having eaten them, the joy of eating them again: these are the three topics that have preoccupied our Princes for the past four days now… It’s a fashion, a frenzy.”

Three centuries later the Potager is again a hive of activity, and not just on the bright spring morning when T&C swooped in with enough haute couture finery to rival the court of Louis XIV. Today it is also a Center of Excellence for climate resilience, one of the pillars of a five-year, $15 million initiative quietly launched by the World Monuments Fund to study the conservation of cultural heritage sites, including historic gardens, in the face of climate change.