The Kitchen gardens of France: Visit Vegetable Gardens Taste the Flavors of France

French taste begins at every meal!  Around the simpliest of all gardens-the kitchen garden or potager-is the essence of the French art de vivire. Monde et Merveilles has designed a series of tours where the kitchen reigns supreme. In French we say Potager for the vegetable garden because the vegetables are used to make soup (potage). As everyone knows, the kitchen garden is at the heart of every garden, but in France, even princes grow their own herbs and vegetables!  Mondes & Merveilles travels to  the Loire Valley, located in the historic heart of France where we will visit other extraordinary kitchen gardens at Villandry (Loire Valley) the Priory of Notre Dame at Orsan and the Louis XIV’s Potager at Versailles.

During these tours we will add a visit to the international festival at the historic Château of Chaumont.  In the extensive park of this Renaissance château, the horticultural institute at Blois hosts a show allowing amateurs and to discover the latest innovations for design and planting. During this tour, we add a visit to the extraordinary exhibition of vegetable and flowers at the Château  at  Courson.  Built in the seventeenth century by a student of André LeNôtre, since 1982  the château at Courson  hosts an international festival called the Journées des Plantes” which is internationally acclaimed by specialists and amateurs alike.  At the Courson festival landscape architects and horticulturalists exchange ideas while enjoying the displays of  exotic and local species.  We also visit the Château of Saint Jean de Beauregard  where the present owners have completely restored the enclosed flower and vegetable garden.
 
 
 

Paris and its Suburbs:
1 : Springtime at  Courson
2 : Autumn at Courson
7 : Normandy
8 : Berry and Bourgogne
9 : Bordeaux and Périgord
10 : Tuscany and Umbria

Masterworks of European Gardens :
Italy, France, and England The History of Europe through Gardens.

Meeting in Rome we begin our tour with an introduction to the Renaissance at the Villa Madama, a magnificent site designed by Raphael and rarely open to the public. We continue our tour of Rome with stops at the recently restored Villa Borghese, the papal Villa Guilia and the Villa Medici atop the Spainish Steps. We move onto the the suburban villas built by the Baroque cardinals at the Villa Lante and the the Villa dÕEste. In Florence we visit the great villas designed for the Medici family at the Palazzo Pitti and Petrai. From Florence we fly to Paris where we witness the evolution of the Italian Renaissance garden to the French Formal garden at Versailles and Vaux le Vicomte. After a tour of the city of Paris and a brief outing to Giverny, we then take the Eurostar to England to learn about English gardens at Chiswick, Stourhead and Sissinghurst.

Provence.
Less than 3 hours from Paris and you are in Provence where you can discover the Provincial Art de Vivre. In Provence, the country house is called a bastide or Mas. The bastide is usually surrounded by terraces for dining out of doors overlooking sumptuous gardens. Our trip will be centered in Aix en Provence considered one of the most beautiful towns in France. At the entrance to the city, the Pavilion Lanfant, commissioned in 1685, marks a monumental entry to the town. In and around Aix there are a number of exceptional gardens: The Jardin d'Albertas, a seventeenth century garden with lavish waterworks, an early nineteenth century château at Brantes, and the Jardin de la Gaude where a modern topiary labyrinth has been planted on a terrace overlooking the local vineyards. From this garden we see the Mont Saint Victoire, one of Cézanne's preferred landscape subjects on the horizon. Aix is not far from Avignon where we will visit the medieval papal palace, museums and the famous Pont d'Avignon whose song is immortalized in every French lesson!

Gardens in and Around Paris.
Available Upon Request Throughout the Year These one to three day excursions are designed for individuals or groups to discover the gardens in the city and its close suburbs. Under the care of Mondes et Merveilles and Susan Taylor you can have a unique opportunity to learn garden history while you visit the city of lights! These visits are designed to follow your individual interests: we can visit the most celebrated examples of French formal gardens at Versailles and Vaux le Vicomte, or the Nineteenth Century Public parks at Butte Chaumont and Montsourcis and perhaps the latest twentieth century innovations at the Parc Citroën and Parc Bercy, among other remarkable sites.
 

Mondes et Merveilles Voyages 7, rue du 29 Juillet - 75001 Paris Tél: +33 (0)1 42 60 34 54 Fax: +33 (0)1 42 60 34 59 e-mail: mmvoyage@wanadoo.fr