Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie was born on 1 March 1626, in
Chabanais,
Angoumois, France. He was the second of the three sons of Guillaume de La Quintinie, a tax prosecutor, and Françoise Morand, a daughter of a surgeon family, . He studied at the
Jesuit college of
Poitiers. Destined for a legal career, he continued his education at the Faculty of Law of the same town. He then left his native region for Paris where he became a lawyer at the Parliament. In the French capital, he stood out for his writing skills. This earned him the task of instructing the only son of Jean Tambonneau, president of the general accounting office. He accompanied the son on a trip to Italy,He then visited England twice and earned the esteem of
King James II, who offered him the job of managing his gardens. The Frenchman declined the offer, preferring to return to his home country. Following the disgrace of the superintendent of finance (
Nicolas Fouquet) in 1661, Louis XIV gave him the job of designing and managing the
Versailles vegetable garden. Once the nine-hectare site had been drained and filled in,:9 it was divided into a central square and 29 enclosed gardens. Built with the objective of supplying the tables of the royal court with fresh produce, the
Potager du roi provided several tons of fruit and vegetables each year. The garden also became a site for horticultural experiments. To satisfy the king's desires, Jean Baptiste de La Quintinie developed cultivation techniques for off-season production –
strawberries at the end of March,:11,
asparagus in winter or lettuce in December. He also contributes to the improvement of the cultivation of fruit trees, particularly their
pruning, an activity that the king enjoyed practising himself. In 1687 he was annobled by Louis XIV and chose a chevron azure with two stars and a tree as his coat of arms., Jean Baptiste de La Quintinie died on 11 November 1688 in Versailles. A few days after, Louis XIV said to his wife, "Madame, we have suffered a great loss that we can never repair". == Gardening manual ==