Loire Chateaux: Villandry

The chateau dates back to 1536 and has since been amended both inside and out many times by the successive owners. The formal gardens were destroyed to create parkland in the 19^th century. When the castle was bought by Spanish scientist Joachim Carvallo in 1906 he made it his life’s work to recreate the original formal gardens from ancient plans and documents.

It is these gardens that win universal acclaim, the scale of which can be best appreciated from the upper floors of the chateau. A view of the vegetable garden is below: everything in the photo is the vegetable garden.

The detail is staggering: each of the squares is planted with a different vegetable. A close-up shows how precise the layout is. The beds are edged with box hedging and each area contains a different vegetable. For example, the lollo rosso lettuce give the red colour, and cabbage for the bright green.

Even at ground level the intricate geometric shapes are amazing. The plants look so healthy it’s also amazing that the visitors aren’t helping themselves. And where are the caterpillars?

Looking down from the castle again, this is the Love Garden. It’s made of perfectly trimmed heart shaped box hedging with infill planting.

The water garden is much plainer but just as precise. The water, i.e. the lake, is on the right in the photo, although it looks like grass because of the green reflection. 

Plenty of exact topiary too. These clipped trees could be chess pawns.

It’s easy to overlook individual plants with everything on such a grand scale. This group of irises looked so attractive in the Sun Garden, which was something more of a mixed variety of plants, shrubs and trees.

The gardens as a whole are completely replanted twice a year, using 115,000 plants. Half are grown in their own greenhouses. It’s a staggering enterprise.

The chateau itself, while beautifully proportioned, isn’t as large or impressive as some in the Loire Valley. Still, more cleaning and maintenance than we’d be comfortable with. The moat looks a little soupy in colour- but didn’t smell.

The swans and cygnets didn’t seem to mind the soup anyway.

Inside, the castle feels like an Edwardian gentry house, which was Señor Carvallo’s era. There were some themed designs like the Louis XV dining room. Do I spy butler Jeeves entering by the far door? Disappointingly, it’s only one of the house guides.

One of the bedrooms is preserved as Prince Jerome’s, who owned the castle some years before Señor Carvallo. Prince Jerome was Napoleon’s brother who clearly favoured pink or maybe Mrs J. did. 

The Carvallos collected many Spanish antiques that are displayed around the castle; even a Moroccan ceiling originally from a 15^th century palace in Toledo, Spain. So if you ever visit Toledo, look out for a palace with a ceilingless room.

They amassed enough paintings for an art gallery, that is housed in the castle, and oddities like this model of the castle, made out of 100.000 matches. The builder must have smoked a lot of cigarettes.

But it’s the unique gardens that we’ll remember most. Villandry was only two miles from our campsite so and easy but very much worthwhile visit