Villandry Potager
Inspired by Chuck B’s excellent post Gardens That Work at My Back 40 (feet), I’m getting around to posting about the potager gardens of Chateau de Villandry in the Loire Valley. Chuck B’s post was about a speaker that had studied and visited potager gardens, including Villandry.
A garden that stays with you.
I’ve travelled a lot and seen impressive gardens from all over the US and Europe, but this vegetable garden stands above them all in its planning, scale and beauty. Well, for me anyway.
What the hell is a potager, and how do you say it?
A potager (poe-ta-zhay) is the French method for the design of kitchen gardens developed by medieval monks. But, this is France, so they raised the vegetable garden to an art form.
What makes Villandry special?
The potager at Villandry is a parterre vegetable garden using flowers and herbs to dramatic effect. Plants are chosen as much for color and shape as for its edible yield. This potager has nine squares of equal size, but different patterns within each of the nine squares.
Short hedges define the outline of gardens and divide spaces within the garden. There are many crosses within the patterns of the the nine squares (they were monks after all).
The exterior of the potager is further defined by horizontal knee-high apple tree espaliers. At regular intervals within a potager, you’ll often find stands of grafted roses, supposedly representing the constant diligence of the care-taking monks (There’s a good post about standard/grafted/tree roses on Garden Rant, here.) I should think they also help attract bees for pollination. Planted regularly are dwarf pear trees. There are also areas for resting, crushed stone pathways, large-scale urns and fountains.
Villandry also has a Music Garden, Maze, Water Garden, herb garden and the garden I’ll post about on Valentine’s Day, the Love Garden.
Villandry’s website has a great collection of photos from past years and through the different seasons. The gardens look just as beautiful covered in snow.
Potager plans.
I have a square, raised, kitchen garden, oddly, just outside my kitchen. This summer I’m going to start my own formal French potager, including espaliers, rose standard, flowers, herbs and small hedges. Don’t tell my wife...
Monday, January 28, 2008
This is but one of the nine equal-sized potager squares in the garden.
Here’s (roughly) six of the nine squares together. They’re tough to photograph together.
Vegetables and herbs are chosen as much for their color/texture as for their edibility.
Within each of the squares the layout pattern is different, often with crosses. You can see the spotty apple tree espalier around the perimeter. The trees in the lower middle are dwarf pear.
Six of the nine squares. The colors are luscious, good enough to eat.
The chateau is top center, potager to the left of it.
The maze is on the lower left.
You can see the nine squares that form the potager garden from space, where google apparently gets its photos. Of course, google can probably see your garden from space too.
