Allier
- Villeneuve-sur-Allier – The Arboretum de Balaine is the oldest private botanical garden in France. It was begun in 1804, but largely was the creation of Aglaé Adanson, the daughter of French naturalist Michel Adanson, who was responsible for the Petit Trianon botanical garden of Louis XV. She settled there in 1812, at the age of thirty, and established it as one of the earliest acclimatization gardens in France, designed to accustom exotic plants from France's colonies to the climate of France. Despite the blockade of Napoleon's Europe by the British fleet, Adanson was able to assemble a remarkable collection of plants from around the world. The garden features a romantic promenade around a pond, and more than 2,500 specimens of trees and plants, including a giant sequoia tree from California six and a half metres in diameter, a bald cypress thirty-five metres high, and a Spanish fir planted before 1850. In spring, the garden has colorful displays of camellias, rhododendrons, magnolias, dove tree, viburnum, and dogwoods. In the fall the garden is noted for its irises, old varieties of roses, and hydrangeas.
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Puy-de-Dôme
Issoire – The Gardens of the Château d'Hauterive were originally part of the domaine of the Abbey of Issoire, founded in the 10th century. The present buildings date to the late 17th century; documents and old watercolors show that the gardens existed in 1680–1691, with much the same plan as today. The gardens are a classical composition of lawns, avenues, eight parterres around a central basin, hedges, and small groves of trees. Flowers include peonies, irises, lilies, delphiniums, sage, lupins and dahlias. The gardens were badly damaged in the storm of December 1999, when 500 to 700 trees were uprooted or broken. The gardens are being restored.
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- The Château de Cordès in Orcival. A fifteenth-century chateau with a recreated garden à la française at an altitude of nine hundred meters in the Massif of Mont-Doré.
- Romagnat – Gardens of the Château d'Opme. The château was first built in the 11th century, and belonged to the Counts and then the Dauphins of Auvergne. It was rebuilt in the 17th century by Antoine de Ribeyre, treasurer to the King. The garden dates to 1617. The garden has two parts; a classical garden in the French style, with a circular basin, fountain, and lawns and tree-shaded alleys; and a lower Renaissance garden with fruit trees, flower beds and vegetable gardens laid out in geometric designs. The two parts of the garden are connected by an unusual stone stairway with two revolutions. The fountain with two basins dates to 1617, and is attributed to Androuet du Cerceau.
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Côte d'Or
- Arceau – Gardens of the Château d'Arcelot. The gardens, located on a gentle slope between the château and a large pond, were created in 1805 by architect Jean-Marie Morel. They feature a Chinese pavilion, old trees, including a giant bald cypress large enough to hold a man inside; and an orangerie, with vegetable gardens and an orchard.
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- Athie – The Mill of Athie. The mill was built in the 16th century and continued to operate until the early 20th century, when it was converted into a cheese-dairy. The garden was created in the late 1970s. It contains a large variety of trees, including chestnuts, maples, and sequoias; four hundred fifty varieties of roses, including three hundred old varieties; one hundred kinds of peonies; a gloriette; a pond of water lilies; and topiary shrubs.
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Château de Barbirey gardens
- Barbirey-sur-Ouche – Garden of the Château de Barbirey. A 19th-century English landscape garden surrounding an 18th-century country house. The garden features terraces, kitchen gardens, an orchard, belvedere, and grotto. Trees include plane trees, cedars, maples, chestnuts, and coast sequoias. The orchard contains pear, plum, apple, cherry, apricot, and quince trees. Seasonal flowers include dahlias, peonies, irises and tulips.
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Garden of the Château de Talmay
Nièvre
A pastoral garden created in the mid-19th century, around a small château and a hamlet of farm buildings. The garden features many trees planted in 1850, including a double alley of giant sequoias; a grove of Cedar of Lebanon; Copper beeches, ash trees and tulip trees; as well as beds of wisterias, roses, hortensias, alleys of pink peonies and blue irises; lavender; a medicinal herb garden; magnolias, rhododendrons, and a carpet of heather. (See photos)
An English landscape park, a classic French garden, and a modern garden of fountains and basins are placed between a medieval château and a busy canal. The garden has an orangerie with rows of fruit trees and hedges beside the canal; a traditional kitchen garden; and boxwood hedges sculpted into shapes like flocks of sheep. (see photos)
A site of an old iron forge, dating from 1660 and 1820, beside the river Nièvre, restored in 1981–1990 and turned into gardens. They feature an English landscape garden, a kitchen garden, flower beds, and many monumental old trees, including a two hundred and fifty year old plane tree.
- Limanton – Garden of the Château de Limanton.
The original gardens had been completely abandoned, and were recreated beginning in 1994 following the inspiration of the 17th-century and 18th-century gardens of the school of Le Nôtre. The garden is laid out in three terraces; the first terrace contains two lawns with sculpted yew trees at the angles; the second has a secret garden, with boxwood hedges, old roses, and a palisaded fig tree; and the third is divided into flower beds and lawns separated by pallisades and rows of fruit trees.
Saône-et-Loire
A private garden of one hectare in the English and contemporary styles, created beginning in 2000 by a couple passionate about gardening, which takes perfect advantage of its hilly site. The wooded portions contain twenty varieties of maple, 10 varieties of birch, and oak, conifers, beech, and hornbeam. Bushes and flowers include hydrangeas, dogwood, dahlias and three hundred varieties of roses.
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- Curbigny – Gardens of the Château de Drée.
The château was built in the 17th century, rebuilt in the 19th century, then restored in the 20th century to the way it looked in the 18th century. The gardens, in the French style, feature squares of white and pink roses and lavender; large terraces of flower beds; a fountain with statues by Jean de Bologne from the fountain of Neptune in Florence; a long perspective; a folly called "The Tower of the Demoiselles"; and an elliptical rose garden, with over 1300 rosebushes in pastel colors around a basin.
- Oyé – Gardens of the Château de Chaumont
The present château and gardens in the French style were created in the 18th century, and restored in the 20th century. Parts of château date to the 16th century. The principal feature of the garden is a grand avenue from the gate to the château lined by yew trees shaped into cones, alternating with statues and vases. There are two secondary avenues of double rows of linden trees. The gardens also feature a large rectangle of chestnut trees providing shade, and avenues of hornbeam hedges 350 metres long on the west and south.
- Palinges – Gardens of the Château de Digoine
The 18th-century château is set in a French garden and a 35-hectare English landscape park, designed by the architect Veringuet. A notable feature is the neo-classical greenhouse, built in the 1830s. The French garden has boxed palm trees and orange trees carved into the shape of half-domes and colombiers, copying the shape of the domes of the château. The English landscape park has four km of avenues, a variety of forest trees and exotic ornamental trees, a lake, a river and a grotto. The flower garden next to the greenhouse was redesigned in the 1920s by landscape architect Achille Duchêne, and the kitchen garden occupies the place of the former cemetery of the convent of the Brothers of Picpus, from the 18th century.
- Sully -Park and Kitchen Gardens of the Château de Sully.
The château and gardens date to the 18th and 19th centuries, and combine elements of an English park forested avenues and giant sequoias, with a classical 18th-century French garden (a kitchen garden, fruit trees, a grand avenue leading to the house, an ornamental forecourt and flower beds.)
A contemporary botanical garden with five themes; an ethnobotanic garden, with historical plants useful to mankind; the Garden of Charlemagne, with plants which the Emperor Charlemagne decreed be planted at every monastery in the Empire, as well as plants imported from the Americas (corn, tomatoes, potatoes); The garden of acclimatization, with new, unusual and forgotten kinds of plants; the garden of scents, with wide variety of aromatic plants, and a tunnel of roses, jasmine and clematis; and an aquatic garden, with both local aquatic plants and exotic water plants, such as water lilies, lotus and papyrus of the Nile.
Yonne
The park was originally the domaine of the Jean-Baptiste Lambert, the treasurer of the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV, who built a château there around 1641, and who commissioned Le Nôtre to design the gardens. The château was destroyed during the French Revolution of 1789. The park was purchased in 1843 by Pierre Carlier, the Chief of the French Police from 1849 to 1851, who helped organize the coup d'état of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852. He re-created the garden as it is today, with canals, a stream and cascade, hedges, roses, plane trees, fruit trees and flower beds.
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Côtes-d'Armor
Garden of the Château de la Roche-Jagu, Côtes d'Armor
A contemporary garden, inspired by medieval gardens, overlooking the estuary of the Trieux River. The centerpiece is a great oak, 350 years old, in the courtyard of the château. The garden features a medieval kitchen garden; a medicinal garden, a medieval flower garden; an avenue of camellias, with one thousand plants of 350 varieties; palm trees; a rose garden; jasmine, wisterias, grapevines, and an alley of pergolas with honeysuckle.
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A romantic English garden and botanical garden, created in 1965. It includes basins, cascades and a water staircase; Italian terraces; and a fine collection of magnolias, camellias, rhododendrons, and plants of Australia, New Zealand and the Mediterranean.(see photos)
Finistère
- Île de Batz – Garden of George Delasselle. Windswept sand dunes on the Breton coast were transformed into a subtropical oasis and garden in 1897, with many varieties of cacti, palms and other plants from the northern and southern hemispheres. The garden was abandoned for thirty years, then restored beginning in 1987. (see photos)
- Combrit – The Botanical Garden of Cornouaille. A private botanical garden created in 1983, with more than two thousand varieties of trees, bushes and plants from around the world. The garden features a large water garden with many varieties of aquatic plants. (see photos) Bonus : A very rich minerals museum
- Huelgoat – The Poërop Arboretum. The arboretum was begun in 1993, in a hilly setting in the interior of Brittany. The most unusual feature is a garden of medicinal plants from Nepal and from the Yunnan Province in China, which recreates a valley in the Himalaya mountains. It also includes eucalyptus trees and plants from Australia; a water garden with ducks and other water birds; sixty kinds of bamboo; and a rose garden.
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- Quimper – Garden of the Château de Lanniron. The Château de Lanniron was the former palace of the bishop of Quimper. The gardens were created in the 17th century by Monseigneur de Coëtlogon between 1668 and 1670. They lie next to the River Odet, and retain their original 17th-century layout- three terraces, including one for flowers and one for vegetables, descending to the river; several basins, fountains and a canal. The gardens now include an arboretum, with an exceptional assortment of trees, including a Magnolia grandiflora, Ginkgo biloba, Cryptomeria japonica and a giant sequoia. (see photos)
- Roscoff – The Exotic Garden of Roscoff. The exotic garden of the town of Roscoff was created beginning in 1986, around a massive rock eighteen meters high. It is dedicated to subtropical and exotic plants, and contains over three thousand different plants from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia, including many rare and endangered plants. The trees include one hundred eucalyptus from Australia.
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- Saint-Goazec – Park of the Château de Trevarez. The Château of red brick and gardens were created between 1894 and 1906 by the industrialist James Montjarret de Kerjégu. During World War II the château was requisitioned by the German U-boat fleet. It was bombed by the RAF in 1944, and the holes in the roof were not restored until the 1990s.
The château is best known for its flower gardens, on the esplanade by the château and the stables. It also has an English-style park, fountains, sculpture and a cascade, all recently restored.
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Ille-et-Vilaine
- Antrain – The Park of the Château de Bonnefontaine is a large French landscape garden surrounding a restored 15th–16th-century château in the Breton Renaissance style. The garden was created beginning in 1860, when the château was restored. The garden and château are presently owned by the Count Merendec de Rohan Chabot. The 25-hectare garden consists of large natural spaces with perspectives and groves of trees, both local and exotic. The trees in the park include sequoias, bald cypresses, magnolias, cedars, palms, some three-hundred-year-old chestnut and plane trees, fuchsias, roses, hortensias, and rhododendrons. The park is known for the chestnut tree of Duchess Anne of Brittany, the last Duchess of the region, who used to sit under the tree. The tree was uprooted by a storm in 1987. (see photos)
Garden of the Château de la Ballue
- Bazouges-la-Pérouse – Garden of the Château de la Ballue. An unusual Italian garden in the mannerist style, created in 1973 by the futurist architects Paul Maymont and François-Hébert Stevens. The château dates to the 17th and 18th centuries, and originally had a garden à la française on the south terrace, which was later demolished and made into a potato field. The garden today features an alley of wisterias supported by yew trees, and a picturesque winding labyrinth.
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- Bécherel – Park of the château de Caradeuc. The château was built around 1723 by the father of the Procureur of Brittany, Louis-René Caradeuc de la Chatolais (1701–1785) in the classical regency style, French landscape park. At the end of the 19th century, the new owner, Count René de Kernier, ancestor of the present owner, asked the famed landscape architect Édouard André, best known for the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris, to design the garden you see today. In the 20th century, many pieces of sculpture were added to the garden, including a rare statue of Louis XVI of France by the sculptor Molchenet and many figures from mythology, placed on the lawns and in niches in the boxwood hedges. The garden has long perspectives, lawns, avenues, a pavilion, kiosks and a grotto, as well as many fine stands of old trees, including lindens and American red oaks, and parterres of red and white roses.
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- Bréal-sous-Montfort – Gardens of Broceliande Created in 1995, this 24-hectare park contains French, English, botanical, flower and kitchen gardens. Highlights include 1000 varieties of irises, 400 kinds of lilacs; 150 old apple trees; 60 types of hortensias; 150 kinds of dahlias; and 150 oak and maple trees.
- Le Châtellier – The Gardens of Haute-Bretagne, Botanical garden of Upper Brittany. The Manor of Foltière, which stood in the gardens, was the headquarters of an uprising against the government of the French Republic in 1796 led by the comte de Puisaye. In 1847, the land surrounding the pond in the park was redesigned as an English romantic landscape garden, with winding paths that followed the terrain, and a perspective from the lawn in front of the manor to the church tower of the village.
The botanical park is made up of 24 gardens and three parts : the Arcadia' gardens that refer to classical antiquity and recall the youth, the romantic gardens represent maturity and plenitude, the twilight' gardens offer a timeless composition which represents the old age. The gardens have over seven thousand varieties of plants, particularly those that grow well in an acid soil, including camellias, magnolias, rhododendrons and hydrangeas. The four hundred camellias reach their peak around 20 March, while the azaleas flower in April.
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|Parc Botanique de Haute-Bretagne
- Pleurtuit – Gardens of Montmarin. A manor in the picturesque Saint-Malo style was built in 1760 by the Aaaron Pierre Magon, Seigneur de Bosc, then sold to shipbuilder Benjamin Dubois in 1782. The original garden had four terraces of French gardens descending to the Rance River. In 1885, the lower two terraces were turned into romantic gardens with many exotic plants, including palms and a 250-year-old magnolia. The garden was badly damaged by a storm in 1987, but has been restored. (see photos)
Morbihan
- Landaul – Gardens of the Château de Kerambar'h. The château dates to the Middle Ages, when Brittany was an independent state. The gardens were recreated from medieval manuscripts to the way they were between the 14th century and 16th century, laid out in a symmetrical pattern inspired by the Cross of St. George and the Cross of St. Andrew. The vegetable garden allowed the château to be independent. The liturgical garden provided flowers for the altar of the chapel. The Garden of the Third Flower was a reminder that flowers were a medieval symbol of virtue. The Capitulary Garden contained medicinal plants as well as edible plants. The Garden of Courtly Pleasures was designed to elevate the spirit. The garden contains ancient roses and a number of oak trees more than three hundred years old.
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- Lorient – Park Victor Chevassu. This English-style and botanical garden is on the site of former quarry and the early 20th-century estate of Lorient businessman Victor Chevassu. It was bought by the city of Lorient in 1973 for development, but after protests it was turned into a park and the old house and garden restored. Today it features a stream which flows into two ponds; a collection of exotic tropical ferns and giant bamboo; collections of camellias and rhododendrons; an animal park for children; large old oak trees; and colorful seasonal flowers in spring and summer. (see pictures)
Cher
- Ainay-le-Vieil – Gardens of the Château d'Ainay-le-Vieil. The gardens feature a large collection of roses, a one-hectare island garden, a meditation garden, and a topiary garden of trees and shrubs carved into ornamental shapes.
- Apremont-sur-Allier – Flower gardens of Apremont.
- Bourges – Garden of Prés Fichaux.
- Chassy – Gardens of the Château de Villiers. The château dates to the 17th and 18th centuries, and originally had a formal French floral garden laid out in parterres. The château and gardens were abandoned after the French Revolution, and restored beginning in 1985. Features include the floral gardens, roses, and a lake with wild herons.
- Maisonnais – Gardens of the Priory of Notre-Dame-d'Orsan. The Priory was built in the 12th century, and rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries, then abandoned after the French Revolution. It was bought by two architects in 1992, who recreated the gardens in a modern form following the inspiration of medieval monasteries. It features a labyrinth of fruit trees, a pergola, and a cloister garden with a fountain symbolizing the source of the four rivers of Paradise.
- Loye-sur-Arnon – The Gardens of Drulon. The 15-hectare park is composed of six gardens on different themes, ornamented with modern sculpture. Features include the secret garden of the château, 500 different kinds of roses, and a marsh surrounded by paths and natural labyrinths created by grazing sheep. In 2004 and 2006 a peony garden with over 300 different tree peonies was created, making Drulon one of the biggest peony gardens of France. This new garden was completed with a large collection of David Austin roses and an enormous number of hemerocallis (day-lilies).
Eure-et-Loir
- Illiers-Combray – The Pré Catelan. The forested park along the Loire River was created in the 19th century by Jules Amiot, the uncle of author Marcel Proust. Proust played there as a child – in Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, the park is called Le Parc de Swann. The lower part of the park has several small exotic ornamental structures, recalling Algeria, where Amiot spent part of his life.
Indre
- Bouges-le-Château – Gardens of the Château de Bouges. The château was built in 1765 on lands acquired by Charles-François Leblanc de Manarval, the master of the royal forges and the director of the royal manufacturer of cloth in Châteauroux, and was modeled after the Petit Trianon Palace in the domain of Versailles. After the French Revolution, the château became the property of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the Foreign Minister of Napoleon Bonaparte. Talleyrand put it at the disposition of Dorothée de Courlande (1793–1862), a wealthy heiress who had been Talleyrand's mistress. and married Talleyrand's nephew. In 1917, the château was purchased by the industrialist Henry Viguier and his wife, Renée Normant, who restored it, decorated and refurnished it. The Viguiers, who had no children, left the house and its furniture to the French State.
The château has a park of eighty hectares, which include a landscape garden, an arboretum, large greenhouses, and a formal French garden. The château and the park were used as sets for scenes of the film Colonel Chabert with Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant(see photos)
- Nohant – The Garden of the House of George Sand. The home and garden of writer George Sand, purchased by the French State in 1961 and carefully restored to the way it was during the writer's life, when she hosted Frédéric Chopin, Delacroix, Balzac, and other great writers and artists of her time. It combines features of a utopian 18th-century French garden and a romantic English garden. It has a court of honor under a large yew tree; an avenue that crosses the wooded park to a lake; a garden of aromatic plants; a garden of cedar trees; and a garden of climbing roses.
Indre-et-Loire
- Azay-le-Rideau – The Gardens of la Chatonnière are located three kilometers from the château of Azay-le-Rideau. They were created beginning in 1993 around the restored medieval château de la Chatonnière by gardener Ahmed Azeroual, who was head gardener at the Château de Villandry for twenty years. They are composed of ten gardens, each with a different theme: Silence, the Senses, Fragrance, Intelligence, Elegance, Abundance, Water, Wonder, Luxuriance, and Romance. Features include a pergola covered with roses, and an abundance of clematis and wisterias.
- Chenonceaux – Park and Gardens of the Château de Chenonceau. The château has two carefully restored Renaissance gardens; that of Diane de Poitiers (1499–1566), which still has its original fountain, and that of Catherine de Médicis (1519–1589). It also possesses a circular maze one hectare in area, created with two thousand yew trees a meter and thirty centimeters high, with a gloriette in the middle, so those who reach the center can see the entire maze.
- Chançay – The Park and Gardens of the Château de Valmer belong to a domaine which produces the local Vouvray wine. The gardens, in the French and Italian style, feature a colorful mixture of fruit trees, vegetable gardens and floral displays, ornamented with balustrades and fountains and a labyrinth. From August to October visitors can find a garden filled with giant squash. There is also an underground chapel dating from 1524 in the garden.
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- La Riche – The Gardens of the Priory of Saint-Cosme.
- Lémeré – The Gardens of the Château du Rivau surround a restored white stone castle built from the 13th century to the 15th century. They are composed of twelve different gardens, and feature a 16th-century fountain, modern sculpture, and a maze. Six thousand irises are in bloom in May, four hundred types of roses in June, and poppies and other flowers cover the fields around the château in summer.(see photos of the Gardens of Chateau Le Rivau)
- Tours – The Prébendes d'Oë is a municipal landscape park and arboretum in the city of Tours. It was created by the Bühler brothers in 1874. It features a group of bald cypresses, statues, and a bandstand.
- Villandry – The gardens of the Château de Villandry. One of the grandest and most-visited of French gardens. The château was built in 1536 by Jean Le Breton, Minister of Finance of Francis I of France. It was modified in the 18th century, then purchased in 1906 by Joachim Carvallo. He and his descendants devoted their attention lavishly to the gardens over the last century. The gardens are laid out on three terraces, and feature a water garden, an ornamental vegetable garden, and several salons of ornamental plants, as well as a maze and a forest. Nine gardeners work full-time on the 1,200 linden trees, nine hectares of garden, and fiFty-two kilometers of hedges.
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Loir-et-Cher
- Blois – Rose gardens and terraces of the bishop's residence.
- Cellettes – Garden of the Château de Beauregard. The Renaissance château features a Gallery of the Illustrious, 327 portraits of important personalities over three centuries. The contemporary garden, created by landscape architect Gilles Clément, is inspired by the gallery, and presents the colors, plant varieties and symbols of three centuries of gardens, in twelve different chambers of the garden.
- Sasnières – Garden of Plessis Sasnières. A private botanical and English garden in a small valley, around a pond. The flower gardens are organized on the theme of colors. Other features include, basins full of trout, Japanese primroses, and colorful bushes in bloom in the spring.
- Talcy – The Château de Talcy. Talcy is not a large château, but a Renaissance country house of the style typical to the Loire Valley. The garden is a recreation of an 18th-century fruit orchard, largely of pear and apple trees, including many old varieties, with the trees cultivated in a variety of ornamental shapes and forms.
Loiret
- Ingrannes – Arboretum des Grandes Bruyères. A contemporary arboretum of 12 hectares created within the forest of Orléans in 1968, inspired by the work of British landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll. The park features a topiary garden and a classic garden à la française; tunnels covered with rose and clematis; and 4500 plants from the temperate zones of Europe, North America and Asia.
- La Bussière – Garden of the Château de la Bussière. The garden adjoins a brick château built in the 17th century. The park was originally designed by André Le Nôtre, and restored in about 1911 by the landscape architect Édouard André. The park features a recreation of an 18th-century kitchen garden, enclosed by walls, with old varieties of vegetables and fruits; and a large French landscape garden, with a promenade beside a lake, and groves of old cedars, oaks, lindens trees and pourpres.
- Meung-sur-Loire – The Arboretum des Prés des Culands, also called the Conservatoire National d'Ilex, is a two-hectare landscape garden created in 1987 in a marsh along the Loire River between Orléans and Blois. It is composed of small islands connected by wooden bridges, featuring trees, bushes, flowers, and aquatic and semi-aquatic plants from Europe, China and Japan. See Photos
- Nogent-sur-Vernisson – The Arboretum National des Barres. Formerly, the domain of the seed growers, the de Vilmorin family, the Arboretum has 35 hectares containing 2700 species of trees, bushes and plants, including a 46-meter high giant sequoia and 70 varieties of oak and other venerable trees.
- Orléans – Parc Floral de la Source at Orléans-la-Source. Source of the Loiret. Created as the site of the Floralies internationales d'Orléans in 1967 and the most visited attraction in the Loiret département
- Triguères – Gardens of the Manor of Grand Courtoiseau. Six hectares of French, Italian and exotic gardens surround the 17th-century manor of Grand Courtoiseau. Features include old varieties of roses, a topiary garden, and an avenue of three-century-old linden trees. See photos
