A family legacy, the Petit-Couronne property was made up of a farm, an orchard (which extended in the direction of the town’s current public garden) meadows, patches for tillage, woods and bush, all equivalent to 18 hectares (more than double the current area). This property was a real estate investment, a source of private income, and sometimes a holiday resort for the Corneille family. Pierre Corneille’s oldest son sold the property in 1686 after the death of his father.
Today’s vegetable garden was not created in 1874 when the Department purchased the property, but in 1994. In the meantime, the surrounding area of the museum-house devoted to celebrating Pierre Corneille had been gradually transformed in order to create authenticity and return to the Maison des Champs. The final touch came following the orchard and the reconstruction of the bread oven, with the 1993 creation of the vegetable garden that includes patches of vegetables, medicinal plants and herbs.

The varieties must all belong to species that were cultivated in the seventeenth century.