Last week’s post was about Salomon de Caus’s career in England. It ended when James I’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who de Caus was tutoring, married Frederick, the Elector Palatine in 1613 and moved to Heidelberg. This might have been a disaster for de Caus but it turned out to be a great opportunity and led to his grandest commission.
Instead of being left looking for a new patron in England de Caus was invited to Heidelberg, and by July 1614 he had been appointed “Ingenieur et architecte de son Altesse Palatine Electorale” and asked to redesign the palace gardens for the happy couple.
These have become one of the most celebrated gardens of the early modern period. They were on an extremely difficult site, but extensive in scale, almost ludicrously elaborate in conception, and possibly with all sorts of mystical overtones. They were immortalised in a much-reproduced painting and engraving, and in considerable detail in de Caus own book about them, the Hortus Palatinus. Yet it’s almost as much about their theoretical appearance and meaning as their actual existence, because they were unfinished, and even those parts which were completed did not last long because of the ravages of war.
In short the Hortus Palatinus is as much a legendary garden as a real one
La Bourdaisière is just one small chateau in the Loire Valley among dozens and dozens of others. It sits on a rise dominating its immediate surroundings, and in the middle of its parc classé [the equivalent of a registered historic park in Britain] and a 90 hectare estate. In itself that does not mark it out much from the other chateaux in the region. Its history is, like its architecture, nothing particularly special. Yet it is has become a remarkable place for one reason and that is its large kitchen garden, and what now goes on inside its walls. And that’s all down to a Prince and his tomatoes…
The Garden History Blog 
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