Jardin bouquetier greenhouse, Château de La Motte-Tilly

The greenhouse stands in the estate of La Motte-Tilly, managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN). Its park, created in 1754 by the architect François Nicolas Lancret, was recomposed in 1910 by the comte de Rohan-Chabot, and has carried the Jardin remarquable label since 2011.

The CMN calls it a 19th-century greenhouse; the Fondation du patrimoine places it within the movement of the "fermes ornées" of the late 18th and early 19th centuries without dating it; a press article of November 2025 says it was designed in 1754 by Lancret. It had already been restored once after the storm of 1999.

Since 2017 the CMN has made the kitchen garden available to the Chlorophylle association, which supports people in job reintegration through organic market gardening; until 2023 it raised its seedlings in the greenhouse. Rainwater entering through the lower glass and the ridge rotted the timber and then deformed the structure, and the building was propped up and emptied for safety reasons. The CMN launched a restoration to the original design, costed at 350,000 euros for ten months of work and made possible by sponsorship from Dassault Histoire & Patrimoine, a public subscription by the Fondation du patrimoine and the "Sauvons notre patrimoine" prize of the Rossel press group. The framing, timberwork, masonry and glazing were reworked piece by piece by the Darde workshop. The greenhouse was inaugurated on Friday 22 May 2026, during an evening that also marked the opening of an exhibition on the marquise de Maillé and the presentation of the label plaque.

Built against the wall of the enclosure, the greenhouse combines wood, glass and cast iron. The Fondation du patrimoine states that it was designed for a hot house and a temperate house, intended for growing flowers and kitchen-garden plants. It belongs to the spirit of the "fermes ornées", whose ambition the same foundation sums up as embellishing rural outbuildings and weaving farming activity into the estate's aesthetic, the greenhouse becoming a structuring element of the landscape reshaped around the château. The cadastral outline reproduced in OpenStreetMap draws a rectangle of roughly 16 m by 5 m.

Before the works, the problems were water ingress, rotting timber, a deformed frame and slipping panes. The restoration to the original design covered the rebuilding of the timber frame and the glazing, the repair of the masonry and the cast-iron stages, the reinstatement of the shading screens, the upgrading of the electrics and the preventive treatment of the metal structures. The CMN explained that joinery and structures were being reworked so that the historic glass could be laid back in place. The cast-iron stages and shading screens, meant to temper the sun, recall the building's original horticultural use.

No plant inventory is published for this greenhouse. The sources give its purpose: to shelter flowers and kitchen-garden plants under two temperature regimes. The neighbouring jardin bouquetier served, according to a 2025 visit report, to grow ornamental flowers.

Today the greenhouse is used for the seedlings of the 1.2-hectare organic, solidarity kitchen garden that the CMN created on 21 March 2017 with the Chlorophylle association, on part of the former potager. The project aims to recreate the 18th-century kitchen garden for visitors and to produce vegetables sold through short supply chains: on Wednesdays in front of the château, to local restaurateurs or by a mobile grocery, the Chloromobile. Since 2019, two further greenhouses have complemented the historic one to meet demand. Workshops are also held in the restored greenhouse, according to the account of the 22 May 2026 evening.

The estate's botanical collection lies elsewhere: the tilletum, created after the storm of 1999, brings together more than 70 species of lime tree ("collection agréée" label).

The greenhouse stands in the jardin bouquetier, near the kitchen garden, in a part of the estate open for strolling: access to the park is free all year, whereas the château can only be visited on a guided tour. For the 2026 European Heritage Days the château invited visitors to walk out to the restored greenhouse.

The Comité des Parcs et Jardins de France gives 2 h 30 for the visit, taking in the orangery, the terraces, the water mirror, the tilletum and the former kitchen garden. A combined ticket links the château with the Camille Claudel museum.