The Château de Chambord Gardens: The French Formal Gardens
Six and a half hectares of lawn, gravel and clipped borders in front of the main facade, replanted in 2017 to a drawing made in 1734. Here is what you are walking through and the three centuries it took to get back, and which Chambord and Chenonceau day tours leave time for it.
The gardens you walk in were replanted in 2017
On 20 March 2017, after seven months of work, the French formal gardens reopened to visitors. The project restored an 18th-century parterre in front of the château’s grand facade, tying the building back to the forest behind it. About a hundred people worked on the site.
Your château ticket includes the gardens. They close 30 minutes before the château does, so if you want both, walk the gardens first.
Why François I never had a garden here
The builder of Chambord, François I, had a bigger problem than planting: the Cosson. The river wound across the estate and left the ground around the château marshy and hostile. The king considered taming it and even bringing water from the Loire, a few miles off, but none of it happened.
Old views show only a small fenced plot near the chapel wing, probably an older kitchen garden. There is no known plan for a Renaissance garden at Chambord.
Louis XIV, Hardouin-Mansart and the terrace
Louis XIV was the first to garden here in earnest. The agency of Jules Hardouin-Mansart drew two schemes for parterres to the north and east, with the Cosson canalised along their edge. Surveys in 2014 showed that the second, gentler scheme was the one partly carried out.
From around 1684 the ground round the château was banked up into an artificial terrace, raised so it would flood less, and retaining walls were built to hold it. Then the work stopped.
1734: the drawing the replanting follows
Work began again under Stanisław Leszczyński, who complained of the swamps and the summer malaria. From 1730 the royal works built bridges and dykes, finished the terrace and widened the Cosson into a canal. A garden in the French style was then planted over 6.5 hectares, to a drawing completed in 1734.
A gardener, Jean-Baptiste Pattard, was hired to finish and keep it. His 1734 drawing is the one the 2017 replanting follows.
Pineapples, oranges and one lime
Maurice de Saxe, who lived here from 1745, kept improving the garden: box, chestnut trees and hornbeam arbours, and trees in tubs set out along the paths. The inventory taken after his death in 1751 lists them.
| In the 1751 inventory | Number |
|---|---|
| Pineapple plants | 250 |
| Orange trees | 121 |
| Lemon tree | 1 |
| Lime tree | 1 |
Later, when the estate went to the royal stud, the east lawns were split into four squares around a central well.
Two centuries of decline, and a 1970 lawn
After the Revolution nobody maintained it. A report of 1817 found the trees unclipped, the paths overgrown and the beds planted with fruit trees or left bare; the dry moats had become a vegetable plot. Through the 19th century only lawn, sand paths and a few rows of trees survived, and a replanting plan by the landscape architect Achille Duchêne was never carried out.
In 1970 everything but the lawn was taken out, and the moats were refilled in 1972. That bare lawn is what visitors saw until 2016.
Visiting the gardens
Enter from the château side with your ticket. The paths are level and the gardens are among the areas the estate lists as accessible. Dogs are not allowed in them, except assistance dogs, and the electric carts you can hire elsewhere stay outside.
For the best view of the pattern, look down from the roof terraces of the keep. From there the scrolls of lawn and gravel read the way the 1734 drawing meant them to.
Where to check these figures
Every figure above comes from the Domaine national de Chambord’s own published pages, listed below. Hours and rates move, so check yours before you travel.
The park beyond the gardens is on the park page, the roof you see them from on what to see, and every way to visit on Château de Chambord Tours.