The plant collections
Prés du Goualoup
The Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire has been listed as a “Remarkable Garden” (“Jardin remarquable”) since 2009 and has seen many new variations and metamorphoses over the course of the years: whether it’s pale pink scented rosebushes arranged in arches near the restaurants, pastel-hued tulips and daffodils planted by the thousand, the Festival’s interstitial gardens or blue and purple monochrome gardens, close attention is always paid to the overall effect, to solid colours and the pictorial aspects of plant life.
But the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire isn’t just a setting for aesthetic and ephemeral gardens, it’s invested in all garden timeframes: the short time allotted to the Festival’s gardens, the long life of its magnificent grounds, and evocation of the history of the site. The correspondence between the Domain’s steward and Prince and Princess de Broglie, the Château’s last private owners, shows them to have been great plant lovers. In the closing years of the 19th century, they asked the famous landscaper Henri Duchêne to create greenhouses, an orangery and a large winter garden, in which they maintained plant collections that went on to be rewarded in the era’s most prestigious horticultural competitions.
As the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire is steeped in history dedicated to nature and creation, it seemed important that we enrich the Prés du Goualoup and various of the International Garden Festival’s areas with plant collections, true living libraries of botanical species and horticultural varieties that should enable visitors to discover and grow new and astonishing plants.