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Summer now brightens the Loire Valley. The limestone chateaux sparkle in ochre and gold. Chambord stands out in a clearing in the forest as an enormous and intricate block of limestone encrusted with slate in its crown. Cheverny appears bleached in the midday sun. In summer’s light Chenonceau seems to prance more lightly than ever over the Cher River. Azay-le-Rideau now enjoys its days in the sun after several years of restoration. The slate bands of Angers glisten grey.

But there’s more to these chateaux than elegant masonry. This year, while continuing to honor its royal and noble stonework, the Loire Valley is celebrating its gardens and their history. Whether you think of it as the Loire Valley, Val de Loire, the Valley of the Kings or “that region with all the castles,” the valley, with its confluents, is now in full bloom.

The history of the chateaux of the Loire Valley is intimately linked with the history of France of the 15th and 16th century. During that period the kings, along with their financiers and entourage, frequently sojourned in the valley. That period corresponds to an evolution of the architecture of the dwellings of the rich and powerful. The high crenelated walls, blind except for their arrow slits, of the defensive castle lost their utility in the 15th century; canons and other arms meant that defenses had to be further out. Castle architects could therefore drop their defenses, so to speak, giving way to more open, ornamental configurations in the form of luxuriant castles and palaces. At the same time, the castle garden evolved from plots for fruit trees, vegetables and herbs to the geometric embroidery of what came to be known as the French garden.

Even though the Bourbon kings in the 17th century returned their focus to Paris (the Louvre, the Tuileries) and the capital region (Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, finally Versailles), the chateaux of the Loire Valley were not forgotten. And their surroundings gardens often expanded along with the scope and fashion of the French garden. By the 18th century the arrival of exotic plants from the New World at the port of Nantes, at the far end of the valley, further enriched noble gardens with vegetation, trees and medicinal plants.

The history of French gardens is therefore intimately related to that of its chateaux, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the Loire Valley.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Loire flows north from low in the center of France before veering west to the Atlantic. When we speak of Val de Loire, the Loire Valley, we refer to the 180-mile stretch of that western flow, from Sully-sur-Loire (southeast of Orleans) to Nantes, including its surrounding confluents and rivers: the Cher, the Indre, the Maine, the Loir.

UNESCO has designated the banks of the Loire from Sully-sur-Loire to Chalonnnes-sur-Loire (just short of Nantes) as a World Heritage Site, calling it “an outstanding cultural landscape of great beauty, containing historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments (the châteaux), and cultivated lands formed by many centuries of interaction between their population and the physical environment, primarily the river Loire itself.”

This year the Loire Valley Mission has placed the region’s gardens as the centerpiece of the cultural season. From château to château—some we may think of as castles, some as palaces—gardens and garden exhibitions throughout the valley invite travelers to take a stroll through the evolution of French gardens: from the closed medieval garden square to the fountains and grottos of the Italian-cum-French gardens of the French Renaissance to the vast aristocratic and royal gardens developed around a central axis, and in some cases to English gardens of the 19th century.

Villandry

The Year of Gardens in the Loire Valley was launched this spring at the valley’s the most famous gardens, those of Villandry.

Henri Carvallo, Villandry’s owner, is the great-grandson Joachim Carvallo, a Spanish doctor, and Ann Coleman, an American heiress to the Coleman iron and steel business, who purchased the property in 1906. They (re)created the Renaissance garden based in part on vegetal archeology, eliminating in the process a 19th-century English garden created by their predecessors. At its origin (during the Renaissance and for the Carvallos) the kitchen garden was created for both decorative and botanical purposes. The Carvallos added terraces, symbolic ornamental hedge gardens, a labyrinth and a water basin.

Joachim Carvallo founded La Demeure Historique, an association of private owners of historical homes and gardens, which remains an important player in the field of heritage sites in France.

Having grown up with a vegetal game board for a backyard, it’s no surprise that his great-grandson Henri Carvallo would become adept at the game of chess. He is a former president of the French Chess Federation and chess tournaments are occasionally held at Villandry.

Ten gardeners work full time at Villandry, with Laurent Portuguez at the helm. Portuguez was hired 10 years ago to head the project for the construction of a new garden, “the sun garden” (2008), and was soon named head gardener for the property. The Carvallo family now lives in what used to be the estate’s farm building, the basse-cour, as does Portuguez.

Villandry’s gardens, open yearround, draw about 350,000 visitors per year. During the time of the stewardship of Henri Carvallo’s parents about 20 percent of visitors would pay the extra francs to enter the chateau. Now about 50 percent pay the extra euros to do so. There are several charming rooms to furnish visitors’ noble fantasies and a Maureque room as a reminder that the expanding world view of the Renaissance bought with it a taste for exoticism. The main attraction to entering the castle, however, is the view from the top of the tower overlooking the gardens.

Other major gardens

Gardens throughout the valley and along its confluents have been replanted, modified, restored or created over the past century, as one would expect from plots originally landscaped hundreds of years ago. Some have disappeared completely, for example Blois, where the city has grown over the garden.

Among the most notable visible today are:

Chambord. Chambord is a national domain where Francis I’s 16th-century castle is bordered by a reconstitution of a garden envision by Louis XIV in the 17th-century gardens and designed in the 18th century. The garden was inaugurated by President Hollande early this year.

Chenonceau. Perhaps due to its soap-opera quality, the historical anecdote that all visitors seem to know when arriving in the valley is this: After the death of her husband King Henri II, who’d been mortally wounded in a jousting tournament in Paris in 1559, Catherine de Medicis forced an exchange of castles upon the late king’s mistress Diane de Poitiers. The queen swapped her emotionless Chaumont overlooking the Loire for Diane’s more modernly elegant Chenonceau stepping across the Cher. Chenonceau’s role in that famous catfight has probably contributed to it being the most-visited privately owned chateau in France, though it is indeed a feast for the eye and the owners, the Meniers (chocolate magnate Henri Menier purchased Chenonceau in 1913), have developed a spectacular setting into a thriving business. The chateau is preceded by a gardens initiated by Diane to one side and by Catherine to the other. A separate garden provides the profusion of flowers seen inside the chateau. There’s also a labyrinth on the property, some donkeys and an English garden that will be inaugurated this fall.

Chaumont-sur-Loire. Meanwhile, back at the Loire, Chaumont is no longer the mammoth that Catherine was quick to swap. Today it would today be well worth an exchange. Overlooking the river between Blois and Amboise, this vast domain belonging to the region Centre-Val de Loire doesn’t need the Year of Gardens to call attention to itself as a destination for garden-lovers. Each year since 1992 an international assortment of landscape gardeners has been selected to create new gardens on a portion of the estate. This year’s theme is Flower Power. Altogether the gardens form a renewable space of innovation, creativity and pleasure for the senses.

Angers. Angers Castle is an impassive fortification on the Maine River. Though one doesn’t typically think of visiting the fortified castle of Angers for anything but a view of its imposing walls and the spectacle of the Tapestry of the Apocalypse inside, snippets of garden and horticulture plots along the top of the walls offer a panorama of the vegetal vocabulary of the French Renaissance. In 2017 Angers and Nantes were ranked as having best policies regarding green urban spaces and preserving diversity, according to the Observatoire des Villes Vertes, an organization that brings together directors of green spaces in cities throughout France. The OVV noted Tours, a central city in the Loire Valley, as the city with the most green space accessible to the public.

Azay-le-Rideau. Sitting on an island in the Indre River, Azay has finally been released from the scaffolding that for three years prohibited an open view of its 16th-century grace. Here it isn’t so much the variety of trees or the English garden that adds to the overall architecture of the setting as the surrounding water in which the castle is mirrored.

Other gardens

The diverse range of chateau gardens and other significant gardens in the Loire Valley that are in the spotlight this year are presented on the website Jardins en Val de Loire. Summer travelers looking to visit gardens beyond the blockbusters noted above will find ample suggestions there for further garden explorations and more breathing space. A program of events is also found on the site.

Don’t worry though if you can’t make it to the Loire Valley this year. The gardens and their history will still be here in the years to come.

© 2017, Gary Lee Kraut

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Versailles’s got its royal stables, Chantilly’s got its noble horse museum and Saumur’s got its Cadre Noir, but for me as a horse-lover watching the horsewomen at the Haras National (National Stud Farm) at Le Lion d’Angers is paradise.

During a season which stretches from end of February until late October, this equestrian center located 16 miles northwest of Angers holds competitions for several types of riding (dressage, jumping, 3-day event) for various ages and skill levels from club level to high amateur and professional level, with two international competitions as the cherries on top.

And each year in May side-saddling horsewomen arrive for Europ’Amazones, a strange and colorful weekend of pageantry, sport and beauty. Amazones may make them sound like arch-toting warriors yet they are among the most elegant horsewomen you’ll ever see.

But don’t get a false idea that this is just about looking nice. These riders come here to compete! They show their skills in dressage, jumping and derby (cross country race with obstacles). They also complete for the overall appearance of the rider and her horse. This year the ladies (somehow “women” doesn’t seem elegant enough) competed in two such categories: “historical,” where the outfit is an exact replica, and “fantasy,” where les amazones have more freedom in choosing their costumes.

The history of one-sided saddle riding dates to the Middle Ages, particularly beginning in the 14th century, when it seemed too unladylike (read: non-virginal) for young women to sit astride a horse. Straddling a horse in a long skirt wasn’t ideal in any case, but it was doable. Nevertheless, proper ladies were expected to sit sideways on a wooden construction resembling a chair with their feet on a small footrest—very impractical for controlling the horse and for going faster than pace.

In the 16th century, during the riding days of Catherine de Medici, wife of French King Henri II, one-sided saddles were improved in France in such a way that a woman could sit facing forward and better control her horse—a great leap forward for horse riding in a long skirt. But Catherine’s rival for her husband’s attention, Diane de Poitiers, the greater beauty, stole the show. It’s said that she rode daily and cut a fine figure will doing so—proof that for the finer things in life in France a lover is often more fondly remembered than a wife. Cause for reflection.

Sidesaddle amazone riding continued to be the norm for proper ladies into the early 20th century. Then women’s rights, among other forces, allowed women the freedom to sport split riding skirts and finally breeches while sitting astride their mount.

As a rider who uses both legs and the whole body to communicate with her horse I find riding difficult enough. An amazone can use only one leg and her body in a limited way, but still has to achieve the same results in dressage.

Two thoughts came to mind while watching the long-skirted riders at Europ’Amazones:  “Woah!” and “Why?”

I soon forgot the “why” in favor of the “woah,” for in addition to their obvious skill these women looked astonishing. No stable-boy look here (that would be me most of the time), no modern, hard-to-maintain clean trousers and tops. The horsewomen I watched were extremely elegant and made it all look so effortless.

Hats off to you, ladies! I mean helmets off.

Text and photos © Justyna Gawąd, 2013

Justyna Gawąd is Polish and is married to a Frenchman. They are proud parents of a European child, guardians of one dog and faithful servants of one cat. Three years ago they moved from Warsaw to the Anjou region of France, where Justyna rides often.

Haras Nationaux, National Stud Farms, were created in the 17th-century by Louis XVI’s minister Colbert in order to ensure the remounting of the French army. Eliminated during the Revolution, they were reestablished by Napoleon I in 1806. Twenty-two such equestrian centers spread throughout France are currently operated by the government’s French Horse and Equitation Institute to promote horse breeding and related activites along with the development of equestrian activities. They are, however, being restructured and will soon disappear in their current configuration although the centers themselves will continue to exist in some form.

Guided tours of the Haras National at Lion d’Angers are given mid-April to early September.

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It was a slow news day in Angers, and probably in the surrounding swath of the Loire Valley as well, when I arrived to speak at the city’s English-language library. I could tell because the regional newspaper found space to announce the event. There I was in a picture borrowed from the web and a paragraph hailing me as “a globetrotting American writer with a new book out entitled Travel Beyond the Clichés.”

No, I do not have a book out entitled Travel Beyond the Clichés, though I wish I did. That was instead the title of the lecture I would be giving while hoping to sell copies of my book Paris Revisited: The Guide for the Return traveler. And taking a 90-minute train ride to Angers from Paris was the extent of my globetrotting that season, but the build-up was much appreciated. It helped draw an audience of twelve, if you count the five members of the library staff, the couple who expected to see slides of a globetrotting non-cliché traveler, and the guy who arrived in time for the wine.

The latter came up to me to apologize for having come too late to buy a copy of Travel Beyond the Clichés seeing as all that remained on the table was a stack of my Paris Revisited.

I nevertheless sold three copies of Paris Revisited, including one to a French woman who said that her English wasn’t good enough to understand anything of my lecture but the book would be good practice for next time.

Overall I was quite pleased. I’d come a long way from the time that I’d given a talk at a library in Westchester County, New York, where a man came up to me afterwards to ask if I’d ever heard of Toastmasters International. No, I said enthusiastically, thinking he was then going to invite me to lecture there. Instead he told me that I should join so that I could learn how to speak in public. Not only did no one in Angers suggest that I take speaking lessons but someone actually invited me to give a lecture at a writers conference in Paris in July.

The library staff in Angers, having nodded wide-eyed encouragement during my lecture, thanked me for coming and said that it was too bad that none of them was free that evening to have dinner with me. (They’d already invited me for a very nice lunch.)

I was spending the night in Angers, so before exploring the town I dropped off my box of books at the hotel. I was staying at the Hôtel de Mail, an old mansion that’s just they way we like our provincial European two-star hotels: clean, comfortable, old-fashion, somewhat empty, and somewhat ghostly.

The wonderful thing about wandering through a town like Angers on a mild the evening is that there are no clichés about the place since so few people across the Atlantic have ever set foot here. Normandy is to the north, Brittany is to the west, the famous chateaux are to the east. Though only five miles from the Loire River, Loire Valley bikers, chateaux hoppers, tour groups, vineyard hounds, chateau-hotel clients, and “Garden of France” lifestyle mavens tend to lose interest in the region just before the signs for Angers become large enough to notice.

Actually, there is one relentless cliché about Angers, even though it truly has nothing to do with Angers. It’s a cliché of a word play that leads travel writers to title articles about this town “A Look Back in Angers.” No matter that Angers is pronounced a(n)zhay and that few readers have seen the 1956 John Osborne. It sounds good. I think I’ll use it here.

© 2008, Gary Lee Kraut

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