Claude Desgotz

Claude Desgots (or Desgotz; c. 1658 – 1732) was a French architect and landscape architect, who designed French formal gardens in France and England. He worked with and was strongly influenced by André Le Nôtre, the designer of the gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles that set the pattern for grand gardening in France up to the Revolution. In spite of increasing competition from the informal English landscape style, the French tradition was kept vital through apprenticeship connections in the generation following Le Nôtre's death in 1700, and a principal representative in this tradition was Claude Desgots, "a worthy heir and a great talent in gardening", remarked the master teacher of architecture Jacques-François Blondel.

Claude Desgots was born in Paris, the son of Pierre II Desgots (1630–1688) and Martine Servelle, who were married in 1654. Pierre II was a landscape designer and draughtsman, who worked closely with André Le Nôtre on the gardens at the Château de Chantilly. He was the son of Le Nôtre's sister, Elisabeth (who was born in 1616 and died sometime before 1640) and Pierre I Desgots (c. 1600 – 1675), who had succeeded his brother Jean Desgots as the gardener of the Tuileries in 1624. In 1675 Claude Desgots was sent on a bursary to the French Academy in Rome, and from c. 1679 he collaborated with his father and Le Nôtre on the gardens at Chantilly. He also worked for a while on the gardens at Versailles and succeeded his father as the gardener of the Tuileries upon the latter's death in 1688.

When William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland was ambassador to Paris in 1698, he convinced Desgots to return with him to England, where Desgots worked out plans for the Queen's House, Greenwich, and parterres for Windsor Castle, in part bringing up to date earlier plans made by Le Nôtre. Nothing came of the English adventure, except that William III of England, who was also Stadthouder in the Netherlands, commissioned him to draw up plans for the gardens at Het Loo, which have recently been replanted to Desgots' designs.

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