This may, admittedly, be a matter of taste. French gardening style is radically different from the British. While the anchors of most UK gardens are their herbaceous perennials, the French are all about ornamental trees, shrubs and annuals. And that's not just in the grand gardens. I nosed around a big local garden centre and there wasn't a perennial besides herbs in sight. In the Loire's most noteworthy gardens, at Chenonceau and Villandry, these are planted in parterres. The designs are impressive when viewed from above, but there's little botanical interest when wandering amongst them. (It's worth nothing that both Monet's garden at Giverny, and the magnificent gardens at Le Romieu in Gascony that I wrote about here in 2015 are designed in the "style Anglais.")
Still, that doesn't mean the gardener can't find joy in the Loire. Here are three sights to put on your list.
Villandry
You don't need me to tell you about this one. It's probably the most famous garden in France. Deservedly. It's the ultimate in French parterres: annuals and vegetables planted in serried ranks within shapes formed by box hedges.
Resist any temptation to skip the chateau. First, because it's a fascinating interior: an eclectic mix of styles assembled in the late 19th and early 20th century by a Spanish immigrant and his American heiress wife, and still very much lived in by the family. (Their love of flowers is obvious in many of the interiors. Don't miss the beds built into alcoves with floral drapes and covers making them into lush bowers.) Second, because you'll appreciate the garden best from the top of the highest tower, where the various sections spread out beneath you like a carefully-planned quilt.
I last visited Villandry in the '90s, and it's clear the family is continually adding elements to reward the gardeners who come from far and wide to visit. In addition to the three original, very famous gardens ... the vegetable parterres with rose arbors and the intersection of paths, the knot garden with flowers in various shapes with complex symbology, and the Italian garden with its lawns, paths, water and evergreens .... there's now a maze, a herb garden, a couple of English-style gardens walled by high hedges and a play area for the kids. The family has added to the interiors as well, with a Spanish art collection, including a Moorish ceiling transported from a Medieval palace, on display and a lush Napoleonic-style bedroom that looks so fresh it must have been completed within the last decade.
The problem with parterre-based gardens is that they offer little horticultural interest once you're down inside of them. They restrict the palette to a few varieties to achieve the big effect. Still, it is a delight to see and a humbling experience for any vegetable gardener.
The Loire's most-visited attraction is a must-see for the gardener, but not for the reasons you'd think. Yes, the gardens are lovely. There are two attractive parterres enhanced by their position next to the river Cher, a maze in the woodland and some less formal gardens off to one side of the main approach. After Villandry, these are the best gardens you'll see in the region. But it's the flowers inside that deserve your attention.
Every room in the chateau is decorated with exquisite fresh floral arrangements. You see this a lot in the Loire chateau, but nobody does it like the management at Chenonceau. There are striking modernist displays. Traditional arrangements. Big, bold statements and quiet, subtle options. They incorporate a range of colours and types of flowers; far more, in fact, than you'll tend to see outside in the formal parterres. During our visit, the kitchen decorations celebrating Easter were particularly good.
I can imagine how it happened. At some point in the recent past, the residents of this small village near Chenonceau with no obvious tourist attractions came up with a fresh angle for getting people to visit. "Most of us like to garden. It's a pretty place, and we have an unusual number of climbing roses. Let's have a rose festival."
There are now more roses (700+) than people (500) here, and every year in late May the village attracts crowds to wander around the handful of lanes to drink them in. The French government has named it a "jardin remarquable", the only village to hold the title. Though I was a bit early for the roses, Chedigny proved a wonderful detour with its garlands of wisteria and colourful tulips in bloom. Tree peonies, flowering fruit trees, spring clematis and early-blooming roses added colour. I could well imagine the glory of the festival (27-28 May this year) as I walked by bushes weighed down with buds. An early visit came with the advantage of a private view. Like so many French country villages, Chedigny appeared almost empty on the weekday I visited. It was Monday, so even the one shop in the village (a boulangerie, of course) was closed. It was as if all the people had been placed under a sleepy enchantment, but the flowers kept going.
Chedigny is probably the place with the most appeal for fans of the perennial-based, English style of gardening. Unlike the Villandry or Chenonceau, it's free to park your car and have a ramble.
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