A Garden Before a Château
At most Loire Valley châteaux, the building is the main attraction and the gardens are secondary. Villandry reverses this relationship. Here, the gardens are the masterpiece, and the château — beautiful though it is — serves as a backdrop to one of Europe's most extraordinary horticultural achievements.
The gardens cover 6 hectares arranged across six terraced levels, rising from the ornamental kitchen gardens at the lowest level to the sun garden at the summit. Over 100,000 plants are replanted twice annually (spring and fall), maintaining the geometric patterns and color schemes that have made Villandry internationally famous. Ten full-time gardeners work year-round to sustain this living work of art.
The Renaissance Vision Restored
Villandry's gardens are not original Renaissance plantings — they're a 20th-century restoration, but one executed with such meticulous historical research that they represent the Renaissance garden ideal more faithfully than most period survivors.
When Spanish physician Joachim Carvallo purchased the neglected estate in 1906, he found an English-style landscape park with meandering paths and naturalistic plantings. Carvallo spent the next 50 years researching Renaissance garden design through period paintings, architectural plans, and written descriptions. He tore out the 19th-century landscaping and recreated what he believed Villandry's gardens looked like in their 16th-century prime.
The result is both historically informed and aesthetically stunning — a demonstration of Renaissance garden philosophy where nature is shaped, ordered, and elevated through human design.
The Six Gardens of Villandry
The Ornamental Kitchen Garden
Villandry's most famous garden transforms the humble vegetable patch into high art. Nine geometric squares, each divided into smaller beds, display cabbages, leeks, chard, and other vegetables arranged by color and texture rather than purely practical considerations.
The effect is theatrical: purple cabbages alternate with silvery cardoons, bright green lettuces contrast with ruby Swiss chard, and orange marigolds provide accent colors. The beds are bordered by low boxwood hedges and fruit trees pruned into spheres and cones. The message is clear — even agriculture can be elevated to beauty when subjected to Renaissance principles of order and proportion.
Two seasonal plantings maintain the garden's appearance year-round. Spring plantings (April–June) emphasize lettuces, radishes, and early vegetables. Summer plantings (July–October) bring tomatoes, peppers, squash, and eggplants. Harvest happens continuously, and produce is sold at the estate's shop.
The Garden of Love
On the terrace above the kitchen gardens, four parterres represent different aspects of love through plant symbolism — an allegorical language Renaissance Europeans understood instinctively.
- Tender Love: Heart shapes in red santolina represent young love, gentle and hopeful
- Passionate Love: Broken hearts in yellow and red symbolize the intensity and pain of passionate romance
- Fickle Love: Four fans in each corner represent the changeability of unfaithful love
- Tragic Love: Daggers and sword blades formed from plants represent love ending in sorrow
The symbolism may seem melodramatic to modern eyes, but it reflects genuine Renaissance preoccupations. These gardens were spaces for contemplation, courtship, and philosophical conversation about the nature of love and human emotion.
The Water Garden
The highest terrace features a large ornamental pond surrounded by cloister-like walkways covered in climbing vines. The design references monastic water gardens, creating a sense of peaceful enclosure. Four small fountains — the only water features at Villandry — add gentle sound without disrupting the contemplative atmosphere.
The Water Garden offers the best overview of the entire estate. From here, you can see the full geometric layout of the lower gardens, the château's elegant symmetry, and the landscape beyond — vineyards, fields, and the Cher River valley stretching to the horizon.
The Herb Garden
Medieval and Renaissance gardens always included medicinal and culinary herbs, and Villandry's restoration incorporates this practical tradition. The herb garden features 32 squares planted with traditional species: sage, thyme, rosemary, lavender, mint, and dozens of others used for cooking, medicine, and dyeing fabric.
The herbs are both functional and beautiful — many bloom with purple, blue, or white flowers, and the varied textures and shades of green create visual interest even without flowers. The garden demonstrates that Renaissance gardeners saw no contradiction between utility and beauty.
The Sun Garden and Maze
The most recent addition (completed 2008) interprets Baroque garden themes through contemporary planting. The Sun Garden features golden and orange flowers arranged in radiating patterns, creating a warm-toned composition visible from the château's upper windows.
Adjacent to the Sun Garden, a simple hedge maze provides entertainment for children — and adults curious enough to try navigating its pathways. The maze uses hornbeam hedges rather than the traditional yew, giving it a lighter, airier feeling.
The Château
Villandry's château, completed in 1536, represents the final Loire Valley château built in the pure French Renaissance style. Later châteaux incorporated more Italian Mannerist or Baroque elements, but Villandry maintains the clarity and proportion of early Renaissance design.
The interior features furnished period rooms, but is less elaborate than Chenonceau or Amboise. The real attraction is the view — from the château's windows, you look down on the gardens in perfect geometric alignment, appreciating the full artistry of the design. This overhead perspective is essential; the gardens were designed to be seen from above, not just walked through.
Best Times to Visit
Villandry rewards multiple visits throughout the season, as the gardens transform with each planting cycle and the changing light.
- Spring (April–June): Fresh spring vegetables, tulips in the ornamental beds, wisteria blooming on the garden structures
- Summer (July–August): Full vegetable plantings, roses in peak bloom, lavender flowering in the herb garden
- Fall (September–October): Autumn vegetable plantings, golden light warming the garden colors, fewer crowds
- Winter: The château closes November through mid-February for garden renovation
Morning visits (9–11am) offer the best light for photography, with sun illuminating the gardens from the east. Late afternoon (4–6pm) brings warm golden light and longer shadows emphasizing the geometric patterns.
Visiting Villandry
Plan to spend 2–3 hours at Villandry. The garden visit alone takes 90 minutes if you walk through all six terraces at a moderate pace. Add time for the château interior, and for simply sitting in the gardens absorbing the atmosphere.
What Not to Miss
- The view from the Water Garden terrace — the only place where you can see all gardens simultaneously
- The ornamental kitchen garden's seasonal plantings — each visit offers different vegetables and color combinations
- The château's upper rooms for overhead garden views showing the full geometric designs
- The garden shop's seasonal produce, herbs, and garden-related books and products