The King's Garden (Fort Ticonderoga)

For me the best part of our visit to Fort Ticonderoga was the time we spent at The King’s Garden. The antithesis of everything a military fort stands for, I loved the acres and acres of flowers, the huge vegetable garden, the happy chickens pecking for bugs, and the rolling green hills leading down to Lake Champlain. Peaceful, verdant, and inviting, I easily could have spent hours wandering the grounds, meditating beneath a shady tree, or enjoying the stillness of a reflecting pool.

Although a part of the Fort, which I posted about below, we had so many pictures of the grounds of the garden, I felt it deserved its own space. In 1756 the French planted the first garden on the Ticonderoga peninsula and called it le Jardin du Roi (The King’s Garden), and it was intended for both pleasure and purpose. Beautiful to look at, but functional as well, raising food to supplement the diets of those who lived and visited Fort Ticonderoga.

Over the years the gardens died off and were revitalized a number of times, for a variety of reasons, and has a long legacy, including being preserved as a landmark in the nineteenth century, and monumental restoration in the 20^th century. I very much enjoyed exploring one of the oldest cultivated landscapes in America.