Château de Villandry
27.05.2005
While waiting for my friends to come back from Paris, I decided to take advantage of a nice day and biked to Villandry from Tours. It turned out to be a very nice ride, as a wonderful treat was waiting for me at Château de Villandry.
Villandry is a small village in the Loire valley about 8km from Tours. What brought the limelight to this village is the garden in the historic château, which was the last of large castle built on the banks of Loire during the Renaissance. Villandry was built by Jean le Breton and completed in 1536. The current château was built on the land of another XIIth Century château. There have been several prominent owners of the château after 1754. The current owner's great-grandfather, Joachim Carvallo from Spain, purchased the château in 1906 and created the gardens we see today.
Le Jardin d'Ornement
There are four main gardens namely, Le Jardin d'Ornement (the Ornamental Garden), Le Jardin d'eau (the Water Garden), Le Jardin des Simples (The Herb Garden), and Le Potager (The Kitchen Garden). Of these four gardens, the Ornamental Garden receives the most attention from visitors for its special "messages" through a beautiful sculptured flowerbed arranged in four squares, each with a special allegory: l'Amour tendre (tender love), l'Amour passionné (passionate love), l'Amour volage (fickle love), and l'Amour tragique (tragic love).
l'Amour passionné
The Kitchen Garden consists of nine squares, organized by the colours of the vegetables grown in them. There are about forty species of vegetables from eight different botanical genera planted in this garden each year. To avoid anachronism, potatoes are excluded in this garden (to be consistent with XVIth Century gardening practice). Though, the garden enjoys a XXIst Century irrigation system with advanced automatic underground watering system!
I also took a walk through the woods adjacent to the garden. It was a super enjoyable walk. The path through the woods provided a splendid views of the village and the valley. Toward the end of the walk was a beautiful XVIIIth Century summerhouse. Boys! those folks in France know how to live well!
One other thing I enjoyed greatly was the hedgerow maze. It's a great place to get lost!
You can practically spend the entire day at Villandry and still feel you haven't seen it all.
Gotta come back!
Posted by moonsail 7:59 PM Archived in France Comments (1)
