© Janet Davis
It was the last day of our French vacation,
a hot, muggy afternoon in the city of Versailles. But I was feeling depressed and defeated when I really should
have felt elated. After all, we’d just
spent ten glorious June days touring Paris gardens and visiting 
grand
châteaux in the Lore Valley nearby.
We had started our forays in Paris right across the street from our hotel, in the alpine gardens and species collections of the Jardin des Plantes, a wonderful slice of history originally established as a medicinal garden in 1626 by Louis XIII’s doctors.
The next day, we had taken the Metro to Parc André-Citröen, a spectacular new park which had opened in 1992 on the abandoned site of the Citröen assembly plant. Here, we’d seen acres of imaginative water features – long shallow canals, tiered “rapids”, dozens of geysers fountains that spouted playfully on a vast terrace filled with wet, squealing children. And gardens! Among them, the Garden in Motion planted romantically with grasses, shimmering red poppies and blue cornflowers, the Blue Garden filled with aromatic lavenders, sages, cranesbills and rich purple clematis clambering along a black arbor, and the Black Garden with its gleaming black granite and dark conifers.
Later that day (along with thousands of other hot Parisians), we had strolled through the world-renowned formal rose gardens at Bagatelle in the verdant Bois de Boulogne, where roses are trained over arches, up pillars and along swags. At the opposite end stands the small but perfect Château de Bagatelle, built in 90 days in 1777 by the Comte d’Artois (later King), to win a 100,000 livres bet wagered by his sister-in-law, Marie Antoinette.
A day or so later, we had travelled by train and bus to Giverny, Monet’s famous garden north of Paris. Even crowded with tourists, it was possible to imagine the bearded painter gazing out the green-shuttered windows of his pink stucco house at the flowers in the Clos Normand or the rose arches spanning the Grande Allée that led to the little lake and his beloved waterlilies.
Later that week, we’d had a beer at the famous tables under the plane trees in the Luxembourg Gardens and strolled to dinner through the formal grounds of the Tuileries, designed by Andre LeNôtre in the 17th century and redefined in the 1990’s by Belgian landscape architect Jacques Wirtz.
Then on
we had driven in to the Loire Valley to marvel at the cabbages growing with
roses and lettuce in the vast, manicured ornamental potagers at the Château Villandry. Later, we had wandered through the
magnificent Château Chenonçeau, comparing the Italianate garden of Henry II’s wife Catherine de
Medici to the French one built opposite for his mistress, Diane de
Poitiers. (Ah, those French….)
On the weekend, we had attended the opening of the International Festival of Gardens at Chaumont-sur-Loire, marvelling at the avant-garde waterscapes created by several talented designers on the château’s grounds.
And today we had finished our 2-day walking tour of LeNôtre’s most famous landscape at Versailles. We had taken our time, returning Monday after the Sunday crowds had departed, having watched in amazement as Versailles turned on its fountains for a mere few hours, lest the tanks run dry.
The Wrong Day to Visit the Potager du Roi
But now, at the big, iron gate to this enclosed
garden in the town of Versailles, I felt my spirits sinking as the man I’d been
imploring in my fractured high school French rejected my plea. “Non, madame”, he intoned,
shaking his head decisively. “Ce
n’est pas possible de visiter aujourd’hui” Alas, I had chosen the wrong day to tour the Potager du Roi,
Louis XIV’s elaborate fruit and vegetable gardens, now a horticultural school
hidden away behind stone walls on Rue Hardy, near the palace. 
I was crestfallen. How could I NOT visit the King’s vegetable garden? How was it possible that I would actually be in Versailles and NOT see Jean de LaQuintinie’s 9-hectare marvel displaying row after row of fruit trees and long walls of espaliered fruit trees, a garden that would instruct the world on the principles of fruit and vegetable growing?
Slowly and dejectedly, we walked down the little street to make our way back to the hotel. I’d almost lost hope when I saw a young man leaving the garden through another gate. What could I lose?
“Je vous en prie, monsieur”, I beseeched in my best whimper, imagining myself as a hearbroken Cosette in Les Miserables. “Je suis une journaliste des jardins et je désire…”
Abandoning his effort to comprehend my sad story, he smiled, shrugged, and swung the gate open for me. Then he was gone.
We walked inside, staring in mute astonishment at this magnificent garden. Then I raised my camera and started clicking. As the film finished and began to rewind, I glanced up to see a professor approaching me with a severe look on his face. Feigning confusion, we mumbled our apologies and beat a fast retreat – just seconds before all those king’s men could chercher la femme.
Reprinted from a column that appeared originally in Toronto Gardens