Travel Stories: International Garden Festival, France 2019

I had a goal while putting together the itinerary for the French garden and chateau tour I led last month. It was to find the French version of the Chelsea Flower Show. Even though the International Garden Festival isn’t quite on a par with Chelsea, it definitely filled the bill.

This festival takes place on the grounds of Chateau de Chaumont and runs from Apr. 25-Nov. 3. That provided me with a lot more flexibility in choosing the dates for our trip. After all, the Chelsea Flower Show only lasts a week (typically the 3rd week of May, in case you’re curious).

Festival history:

This is the 28th year of the International Garden Festival. The 2019 theme is the “Gardens of Paradise.” One of the concepts was to combine technology and nature harmoniously. There are 24 show gardens. They were created by international teams of landscape architects, urban planners, designers, and artists.

On the show’s website, there was an explanation of the ideas behind it.

The competitors of the 2019 edition have offered a contemporary vision of this paradise, successfully combining a Utopian version of this dream ‘other place’ with modern-day inventions, in terms of both materials and plants.”

International Garden Festival

I don’t know if that explanation helps, but it at least gives you an idea of what they had in mind!

Festival gardens:

There are also 14 permanent gardens on the chateau grounds. These were Chinese garden, mirror garden, English garden, Japanese garden, water garden, old rose arch, African garden, and children’s garden. The the experimental vegetable garden was pretty interesting. Everything is grown using environmentally-friendly methods.

Although nothing like Chelsea, there were even a couple of shopping opportunities. The Chateau Boutique has books, games, souvenirs, and edible items. Garden Boutique features books, seeds, plants, vases, pots, etc. There were also some restaurants available to festival-goers.

But back to the Chateau de Chaumont. We had the opportunity to explore the chateau and it was lovely! The setting is very peaceful and it was fun wandering through the various rooms.

Photos from the festival:

Here are photos from our visit to the International Garden Festival. Remember that you can click on any of them to view a much larger image.

Above left: not a bad location for your chateau! Above right: Chateau de Chaumont.

Above: This was an interesting show garden. It was raised on “legs” with a hole in the middle (and also viewing points here and there along the perimeter). You went underneath it and popped your head up through the middle. The designers wanted you to feel like you were surrounded by a garden. I was tickled to see the butterfly on the right!

For more information about this annual festival, go to this website.