The Remarkable Gardens of France is intended to be a list and description, by region, of the more than three hundred gardens classified as "Jardins remarquables" by the Ministry of Culture and the Comité des Parcs et Jardins de France.The complete list of gardens can be found on: site of the Comité des Parcs et Jardins.
Gardens of Alsace
Bas-Rhin
Brumath - Jardin de l'Escalier. (1973) Small private modern romantic floral garden. (See Photos) Kintzheim – The Park of Ruins of the Château de Kintzheim. An early 19th-century romantic landscape garden. (See photos) Kolbsheim – The Garden of the Château de Kolbsheim. (1703) French garden and English landscape park. (See photos) Ottrott – Le Domaine de Windeck. (1835). Romantic landscape park, with views of the ruined castle of Ottrott. (See photos) Plobsheim – Le Jardin de Marguerite. (1990) Small private English "secret" garden in the Alsatian village of Plobsheim. (See photos) Saverne – Jardin botanique du col de Saverne. Botanical garden in an enclave in the Vosges Forest. (See Photos) Strasbourg – Jardin botanique de l'Université de Strasbourg. Founded in 1619, the second-oldest botanical garden in France. (See photos of the garden) Uttenhoffen – Jardin de la Ferme Bleue. Modern garden on the site of a 17th-century farm. (See photos)
Haut-Rhin
Guebwiller – Parc de la Marseillaise. Public arboretum and botanical garden, designed by Édouard André between 1897 and 1899. (See photos) Husseren-Wesserling – Parc de Wesserling (17 hectares) Private garden at the site of a hunting lodge of the prince-abbey of Murbach (1699). Formal French garden, flower garden, kitchen garden, field garden and contemporary garden. (see photos) Mulhouse – Parc Zoologique et Botanique de Mulhouse. (25 hectares) Public botanical gardens and zoo, English landscape park.(See photos) Riedisheim – Park Alfred Wallach. Created in 1935 by Paris landscape architect Achille Duchêne; stairways connecting the different parts of the garden; and tree-shaded allées. (See photos)
Gardens of Aquitaine
Dordogne Domme – Park and Boxwood Garden of the Château de Caudon. A garden à la française and French landscape garden, created between 1808 and 1814 by the Marquis Jacques de Malville, one of the authors of the French Civil Code. See pictures
Eymet – Park and Kitchen Garden of Pouthet. A small 18th-century château in the valley of the Dropt River features an avenue of cedar planted in 1860; cyclamen, crocus and jonquil in season; and a garden of vegetables and flowers grouped by color. (See pictures.) Hautefort – Gardens of the Château de Hautefort. The château was reconstructed in the 17th century, and embellished with a garden à la française (jardin à la française). In 1853, the gardens were redone by the celebrated landscape architect the Count of Choulot, and the château, gardens and landscape were unified, with geometric flower gardens, topiary gardens imitating the domes of the château, and a long tunnel of greenery. Next to the formal gardens is a hill with an Italian garden with winding shaded paths. Notable trees in the park include a Magnolia grandiflora and a Cedar of Lebanon. (See pictures) Le Buisson-de-Cadouin – Garden of Planbuisson. The garden presents two hundred and sixty four different types of bamboo, from dwarf bamboo to giant, as well as exotic trees, such as Paulownia fortunei. The garden is particularly attractive at the end of summer, autumn and winter. (See photos) Saint-Cybranet – Gardens of Albarède An unusual modern garden, created by landscape architect Serge Lapouge. The garden features one thousand species adapted to the dry and rigorous climate and poor soil of the region. It presents fruit trees, aromatic plants, a topiary garden, old types of vegetables and roses, as well as examples of the rural architecture of the Périgord region. (see photos)
Saint-Germain-de-Belvès – Garden of Conty. A French hilltop garden in Périgord, inspired by the gardens of Tuscany. The garden features cypress trees from Italy, chestnut, plane trees, walnut and oak, a wide variety of fruit trees, and a medieval kitchen garden. (See Photos) Manor d'Eyrignac in Salignac-Eyvigues – A garden à la française and French landscape garden from the 18th century, recreated in the 20th century, surround a 17th-century manor house on a hill, with water coming from seven springs. (see photos)
Thonac – Gardens of the Château de Losse. The pleasure garden of a Renaissance château next to the Vézère River, with gardens atop the walls overlooking the river, a tunnel of vines, a fine rose garden, a courtyard with squares planted with lavender, edged with rosemary, and guarded by cypress trees. (see photos)
Vézac – Gardens of Marqueyssac. Built in the 17th century by Bertrand Vernet, Counselor to the King. The original garden was created by a pupil of André Le Nôtre, and featured gardens, terraces, and a kitchen garden surrounding the château. A grand promenade one hundred meters long was added at the end of the 18th century. Beginning in 1866, the new owner, Julien de Cerval, who was inspired by Italian gardens, built rustic structures, redesigned the parterres, laid out five kilometers of walks, and planted pines and cypress trees. (See Photos) Terrasson-Lavilledieu – Gardens of the Imagination (fr: Jardins de l'Imaginaire). This contemporary garden, a public park of the town of Terrasson, was designed in 1996 by landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson to present thirteen tableaux of the myths and legends of the history of gardens. It uses simple natural elements; trees, flowers, water and stone to suggest the passage of mankind from nature to agriculture to the city. It uses a symbolic sacred wood, a rose garden, topiary art, and fountains to tell the story. (See Pictures) Vélines – Gardens of Sardy. A small garden from the 1950s built around a country house, with a shaded terrace for tea, and intimate landscapes and views inspired by English and Italian gardens. Issac – Gardens of the Château de Montréal. The château was built in 1535, in the Renaissance style, on the site of a fortress dating to the 13th and 14th centuries. The gardens were built upon the ramparts of the fortress at the beginning of the 20th century by Achille Duchêne. The lower garden is in the Italian style, and features hibiscus and yew trees, and walls covered with white roses and white clematis. The upper garden is a jardin à la française, with ornamental flower beds and a topiary garden. The garden was badly damaged by a storm in 1999, and has been replanted.(see pictures) Urval – Gardens of la Bourlie. Originating as the gardens of the château of a noble family of Périgord in the 14th century, the original 17th-century gardens featured a kitchen garden and an early French ornamental garden surrounded by a wall. Later, in the 18th century, a grand axis between the village and the woods was created, along with an alley of linden trees, and a topiary allée of yew trees. In the 19th century a French landscape garden was added, with coniferous trees and varied plants. The château also has fine collection of old roses and fruit trees.
Gironde Cussac-Fort-Médoc – Park of the Château Lanessan. The garden is surrounded by the vineyards of the château, in the Médoc wine region of Bordeaux. The château and gardens were built in 1878 by the architect Duphot. The gardens are in the English style, with avenues, lawns, and cedar, cypress and plane trees.(see photos) Portets – Gardens of the Château de Mongénan. The château was built in 1736 and the botanical gardens created in 1741 by the Baron de Gasq, inspired by his friend and music teacher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the theories of the botanist Linnaeus, who believed that all plants were valuable, whether they were ornamental, medicinal, wild, or for food. The garden was made to resemble the ideal pre-romantic garden Rousseau described in La Nouvelle Héloïse, full of aromas and colors. The current garden is kept as it was in the 18th century, with vegetables of the era, local varieties of fruit trees, 18th-century varieties of roses, asters, irises, dahlias, aromatic plants, and plants used to make perfume. The tuberoses and jasmine fill the gardens with their aromas.
Preignac – Gardens of the Château de Malle. These gardens, adjoining a château famous for its sauterne wines, were designed between 1717 and 1724 by Alexandre Eutrope de Lur Saluces, and are considered among the finest gardens of the French classical age. They were inspired by the gardens that he saw in Florence during his grand tour of Italy and his time spent at the court in Versailles. The park has a wide central axis and two terraces, with groups of statues and vases. The statues were done by Italian artists brought there for that purpose in the early part of the 18th century, and represent figures from Greek mythology: Cephalus, Aurora, Cupid, Aphrodite (Venus), Adonis, and Flora, the goddess of flowers and gardens. Other statues represent wine-making, the joys of the hunt and fishing, wine and intoxication. To the east of the first terrace is a small theatre, decorated with figures from the Italian commedia dell'arte: Pantalone, Scaramouche and Harlequin. A stairway leads to a second terrace decorated with statues symbolising of earth, wind, air and fire.Michel Racine, Jardins en France, p. 42 (see photos) Vayres – Gardens of the Château de Vayres. The château was built on a mound on the edge of the Dordogne River in the 15th century, then rebuilt in the Renaissance when it was given by King Henry IV to the Gourgues family. It was rebuilt one more time at the end of the 17th century. The gardens were rebuilt in 1938 by the landscape architect Ferdinand Duprat. A monumental stairway leads from the château across the old moat to the French gardens by the river, where there are parterres bordered with hedges of yew, and boxwood trees clipped into cone shapes. There is also a flower garden of medieval inspiration, and an English-style park, with cedar, oak, linden, hornbeam and copper beech trees. (see photos)
Landes Dax – Park of Sarrat. The park, formerly the home and garden of architect René Guichemerre, was created by him from the 1950s until his death in 1988. It contains his modern house, inspired by the architects Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright; an impressive alley of plane trees; a French garden with fountain and cascade; an extensive kitchen garden; and a botanical garden with 320 kinds of trees, many of them rare. (See photos)
Lot-et-Garonne Le Temple-sur-Lot – The Gardens of Latour-Marliac, created in 1870 by Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, are devoted entirely to different species of aquatic plants, particularly the water lily. The gardens feature a grotto, a cascade, thermal springs, a wide variety of tropical vegetation, and the oldest nursery for aquatic plants in the world. In 1894, The Gardens of Latour-Marliac furnished the water lilies for the garden of Claude Monet in Giverny. (see photos)
Pyrénées-Atlantiques
Cambo-les-Bains – Gardens of the Villa Arnaga. These gardens were created beginning in 1903 by the French playwright Edmond Rostand, the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, next to his home, which is now the Edmond Rostand Museum. The house, in the Basque style, looks out at the Pyrenees. To the east of the house is a formal geometric French garden, with fountains, statues, three basins, a topiary garden, an orangerie, a belvedere a pergola, and a "poet's corner". The garden has colorful annual displays of rhododendrons and azaleas. Around the French garden is a wooded English landscape garden, with clusters of oak, maple, chestnut, walnut, linden, and fir trees. The park descends to banks of the River Arraga, where there is a picturesque water mill. (see photos)