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Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Loire River, the castle of Chaumont has great appeal year-round for a drive-by photoshoot. But the true fairy tale is in the backyard from April 1 to November 2 when the annual International Garden Festival, now in its 25th year, makes the castle, its stable and surrounding 79 acres ready for an enchanting variety of close-ups.

This is not your great-grandmother’s garden party. Every year the festival invites creative folk from other fields (e.g. Baroque music conductor Willliam Christie, architect Shiguru Ban, Michelin-starred chef Alain Passard, choreographer Benjamin Millepied) to get their hands dirty in the vast domain of Chaumont, where they’re joined by landscape gardeners and architects and botanical-minded individuals more accustomed to playing in the mud. Young garden creators selected in an annual competition for garden projects round out a truly international festival that displays great diversity in conception and execution.

The results are often playful, thought-provoking and unusual, and the current offbeat crop created around the theme “Gardens from the Coming Century” is no exception.

Among this year’s headliners is the decadently hedonistic “Perfumer’s Garden” created by Hermès “nose” Jean-Claude Ellena, who thoughtfully includes a circle of low-rise lounge chairs. (Message: There’s no excuse not to smell the roses and get up-close-and-personal with the roots.)

“Explosive Nature,” designed by landscape architects Marguerite Ribstein and Grégory Cazeaux, is guerilla gardening at its best, created by “seed grenades” lobbed at random towards a wooden bridge structure. It’s a Darwinian Battle of the Buds based on ancient Japanese terra-forming techniques and one of the most classically harmonious gardens of the year.

There’s so much growing at Chaumont that a map—and at least half a day—is necessary. Besides this year’s offbeat ephemeral gardens, there are plenty of old-fashioned art-for-art’s-sake flower gardens, a magnificent variety of long-rooted trees and an ambitious indoor/outdoor art show drawing big-name, blockbuster talents like Andy Goldsworthy, El Anatsui and Marc Couturier.

Unlike the gardens, the castle itself, while old enough to have a working drawbridge and to have been a pawn in the 16th-century Catherine de Medicis/Diane de Poitiers Chaumont-for-Chenonceau real estate swap, is definitely your great-grandmother’s castle… if she were a party-loving 19th-century heiress, that is.

In 1875 17-year-old sugar heiress (and Kim Kardashian prototype) Marie-Charlotte-Constance Say bought what was then a rundown castle. With her husband, Prince Amédée de Broglie, she turned the castle and its domain into France’s premier party venue. The French A-List drank the Princess’s bubbly and an Indian Maharajah sent an elephant as a bread-and-butter gift.

There are lots of elephant photos in the regionally-owned castle (75% self-supporting) since the curators have been banking on emphasizing the site’s colorful 19th century history (less expensive to procure) when refurbishing the castle. While there are some “old” rooms, like the quirky salon dedicated to Catherine’s astrologer, it’s never the “ordinary” Renaissance chateau. The rooms are filled with artworks by the contemporary likes of Sarkis and Gabriel Ozozco.

Don’t miss the stables. Not only is this equine manor house architecturally splendid and vintage harness and saddlery equipment (lots of Hermes here), but that’s where two of this year’s highlight instillations are on view: a fanciful vegetal sculpture signed Patrick Blanc and a gloriously, green marble evocation of the Seine created by Mathieu Lehanneur. The latter was voted by DeZeen Magazine as one of the eight “must see” installations worldwide in the summer of 2016.

Those wishing to explore far and wide on the castle grounds might also go hunting for the princess’s dog cemetery on the edge of the woods.

Practical information: Visiting the castle, the stables, the garden festival at a leisurely pace will take at least several hours. There are decent lunch possibilities on site: a snack bar, a pasta bar and an actual restaurant. Entrance to the castle, the stables and the garden festival costs 14€, 6€ for children 6-11 years old and it’s free for younger children. Two-day passes are available for the passionate gardener. See Chaumont’s website for further details.

Getting there: Chaumont is between Blois and Tour, 165 miles southwest of Paris, about a 2½-hour drive. Trains to Onzain/Chaumont-sur-Loire leaving from Paris’s Gare d’Austerlitz take roughly 2 hours depending on the route; the entrance then a 10-minute walk from the station. Trains operate year-round but most frequently in July and August.

Lodging nearby: There’s the attractive little 3-star Hostellerie du Château (pool, restaurant) in the village so in walking distance, and the luxurious 4-star Domaine des Hauts de Loire (Relais & Chateau) in nearby Onzain.

Preparing for 2017: The competition is already underway for entries to take part in next year’s festival under the theme “Flower Power.”

© 2016 Corinne LaBalme

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I’d arrived on the early morning 90-minute train to Blois and would leave the following morning for two days of biking to nearby chateaux.

Arriving at Blois Castle, I immediately encountered King Louis XII (born 1462, reigned 1498-1515) on horseback above the entrance of a wing that he had built when he assumed the throne upon the death of his childless cousin Charles VIII and began transforming his ducal castle into a royal palace.

He showed me some of his signature porcupines.

Scott Corregan was my personable and ever-so knowledgeable guide. I soon thought of him as the Malcolm Miller (of Chartres fame) of Blois Castle. Scott re-introduced me to Louis XII and then presented me to Francois/Francis I, whose protuberant profile I recognized even before he turned to greet me.

Francois (born 1547, reigned 1515-1547) inherited the throne when his cousin Louis XII died without a son, though he did have a daughter, Claude, who had grown up at Blois and who Francois married. Not to be undone by the porcupines, Francois displayed a great many fire-breathing salamanders on the wing that he built, including this one that I encountered on the novel outdoor staircase.

I had an audience with Henri III (born 1551, reigned 1574-1589), whose reign was full of festivities, intrigue, civil war and assassination, and caught sight of his sworn enemies of the Guise clan lurking in the corner.

I had a brief chat with Gaston d’Orléans (1608-1660, brother of Louis XII) when he was young and still full of hope of one day becoming king. But his plans of making Blois once again a royal abode began to unravel with the birth of his nephew the soon-to-be King Louis XIV, and Gaston lost the motivation to rebuilt his palace after reconstructing only one wing.

I went across the long square from the castle to the Magic Museum where I was introduced to native son Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, a 19th-century clockmaker, conjuror and magician, a man so accomplished that Harry Houdini borrowed his name.

Magician Arnaud Dalaine, gave me a wonderful tour of this entertaining and informative kid-of-all-ages-friendly museum and treated me to some card tricks with a sleight of hand that I couldn’t in the least decipher from under two feet away.

I saw dragons in the windows of the museum, one of whom broke through the railing to roar hello. Or was it good-bye?

I took a drizzly walk in the park by the Bishop’s Palace where, to my surprise, I came upon Joan of Arc (1412-1431) riding along the edge of the hill overlooking the River Loire. She raised her sword to acknowledge my presence but scarcely turned from her mission.

I was lodging at the excellent B&B La Maison de Thomas. The Thomas in question is Guillaume Thomas, however the Thomas I met was his father Bernard, who had led him into the B&B business…

… and had kept a key to the wine cellar. Before I went out to dinner, Bernard Thomas gave me a tour of that cellar from which he selected several bottles to try. I called the restaurant to postpone my reservation, giving me time to encounter winemaker Xavier Frissant though a wine from his fié gris vineyard downstream the Loire in Mosnes, near Ambroise, and winemaker Benoit Daridan through a wine from his romarantin vineyard across the river from Blois in Cour-Cheverny territory. Fié gris and romarantin are two old Loire Valley grapes; romarantin is only grown here. (I also met an unmentionable sauvignon blanc from a third Touraine winery.)

After a prolonged aperitif I had a terrific dinner at Au Rendez-Vous des Pecheurs, a friendly little gastronomic place where fisherman once gathered for a drink and their wives once picked up groceries. Unable to decide between fish dishes, I selected the full force of the tasting menu of owner-chef Chistophe Cosme, whom I first spotted through the service window into the kitchen.

From a thick slice of salmon to an asparagus and mi-cuit fois gras combination to a lobster, ox cheek and ham combination to a pike dish to a raspberry mille-feuille, Christophe Cosme revealed his talent for serious, natural, even-handed, low-heat, product-friendly preparations. I hated to say good-bye so quickly…

… but it was nearly 10:30 and I wanted to catch the sound-and-light show on the inner facades of the castle. It was pouring and I was without an umbrella, but after a meal like that who cares.

While those with umbrellas ventured into the castle courtyard…

… I stood beneath the arcades of one of the Louis XII wings and watched as the walls on the three other wings came delightfully to life as a recording (in English on Wednesday only) reintroduced me to the characters I’d met earlier in the day, including France’s most memorable Queen Mother Catherine de Medicis.

Before leaving Blois by bike the following morning I returned to the castle for a dryer look. The rain gods had threatened to spit along my biking route for the next two days,…

but it turned out that the clouds, like those grotesques at the castle, were only decorative.

It also turned out that even without much historical bla-bla Blois is a town of fascinating, magical, entertaining, friendly and tasty encounters.

Photos and text © 2012, Gary Lee Kraut.

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