Paradise Castle Garden – Style

The center of arts and nature of Chaumont-sur-Loire stands alone on the tourist route through the castles of the Loire. People come here not for the legends of the past, but for the ephemeral beauty of the International Garden Festival, which this year will last until November 5th.

The female face of Chaumont: queens, favorites and duchesses

On one side – Amboise with the chambers of Francis I and Leonardo da Vinci, on the other – Blois with the possessions of the Dukes of Orleans. Like the other fifty castles that make up the historical and cultural heritage of the Loire Valley, Chaumont-sur-Loire picturesquely hangs over the banks of the longest French river, whose landscapes are included in the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List. Founded already in the 1st millennium AD. and served for several centuries as the Amboise family nest, it went down in history thanks to the women of Henry II – Catherine de Medici, the legal wife, and Diane de Poitiers, the official favorite who raised the future king literally from the cradle. The Medici bought Chaumont in 1550 for the soul. Here, unlike the castle of Chenonceau, where her rival reigned, she was a full-fledged mistress – she rested, hunted and listened to the predictions of Nostradamus and Ruggieri. After the death of the king, the Medici first of all put de Poitiers out of Chenonceau, gallantly offering her Chaumont in return.

The last owners of the castle, who owned it until 1938, were the de Broglie family. Marie-Charlotte-Constance Say, the beauty heiress of the Say sugar empire, and her husband, Duke Henri-Amede de Broglie, restored the interiors to their tastes, installed electricity and running water. They lived here in grand style for forty years, but the historical apartments of Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers and astrologers were carefully preserved, they are intact to this day. De Broglie’s main trail is a park that impresses with its size and variety. A day is not enough to get around it. And this is considering the fact that the duchess, who went bankrupt at the end of her life (she died in poverty, huddling either in the rooms of the Ritz, or George V, or in apartments on Grenelle Street), sold most of the land: today’s 20 hectares are only a small part that survived from the original 2.5 thousand. On them, the annual International Garden Festival is held from April to November, for which it is worth getting to Chaumont.

What is it, a garden of the XXI century?

The history of the festival began in 1992. Gardens in the central region of France are still blooming according to the fashions of the 19th century and the precepts of Le Nôtre, so the festival initiators thought about creating a garden of the 21st century. What should be his style, what should grow in him, why and for what? As the festival grew, so did the place of the garden in modern life. Today, not a single urban project can do without landscape painters and landscape designers, graduates of specialized schools are in great demand, and “landscape art” has ceased to be a figure of speech from the past. Like contemporary art, it not only pleases the eye, but also asks relevant questions. The theme of this festival is a sustainable garden. The climate is changing, there is less and less water, fires are becoming more merciless, living creatures are disappearing, and man continues to cultivate his garden. 25 projects from the USA, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, China, India and Finland are looking for answers to the question of what it means to be resilient in the new conditions and how to turn difficulties into strength. Projects are scattered throughout Chaumont-sur-Loire so that each has its own separate oasis, the audience wandering in living scenery as if in an immersive performance.

Nest gardens, rivers of blood and hope

Having made his way through the Möbius ribbon woven from ivy, a giant tent grows before your eyes – not a yurt, not a nest, twisted from herbs and molded from clay. Adults climb inside almost more willingly than children. This is what it is designed for, since according to the manifesto “What cannot be stolen”, the need to nest is one of the fundamental human needs. Its authors, who are also the authors of the garden, psychologist Cynthia Fleury and designer Antoine Fenoglio, compiled their list of human values ​​(silence, horizon, health, memory of ancestors, etc.) and translated them into the language of nature. In their garden, you can write notes to the dead – the wind will deliver words to the address, read books from birdhouses (they act instead of shelves) and listen to silence. Only croaking frogs are allowed to break it.

The nest world metaphor will reappear in the green sculptures of Catherine Cocherel. They look like the famous ball-chair of the legendary Finn Eero Aarnio, only instead of plastic there is abundant greenery. Moreover, this lawn changes depending on the season: some grasses fade, others take over. And a person sits inside this cozy, blooming planet, taking its beauty for granted. In addition to poetry, there is a place here for new technologies of soilless cultivation, indispensable for the “living” walls of city buildings.

Jean-Philippe Poiret-Ville, the author of a garden with an overgrown fountain in the middle of the pool, offers to stop the run of life to the lulling clatter of water drops. The pool is entwined with anemone flowers, and the jets of water have long turned into flower tentacles, which are about to be pulled into their trap by curious spectators.

From the fairy-tale fountain – to the “virtuous (almost) island”. A piece of fertile land in the form of a boat, where tomatoes ripen, basil fluffs and a small arbor huddles, is surrounded by red water (it contains iron, blood, and all our excesses and troubles). The apocalypse is within reach. This “Noah’s Ark” does not flee from modern disasters in the form of climate, environmental and food crises, but adapts to them. On board is everything you need for the life cycle – you don’t have to fly anywhere, or even swim.

Stronger than all metaphors, as always, is real life. Landscape painter Frank Serra, recognized in France as the 2021 Master Gardener of the Year, has compiled his project Terre de feu from trees burned last summer. Then all of France was on fire – from the Atlantic to the southern coast. At the beginning, you literally walk on scorched earth, among charred stumps, and a persistent smell of burning hits your nose. But step by step, the landscape gradually comes to life: blades of grass begin to break through the ashes, and a new life comes to replace the burnt trunks of the past.

Maria Sidelnikova