List of Remarkable Gardens of France

The present buildings date to the late 17th century; documents and old watercolors show that the gardens existed in 1680–1691, with much the same plan as today.

The gardens are a classical composition of lawns, avenues, eight parterres around a central basin, hedges, and small groves of trees.

The gardens, in the French style, feature squares of white and pink roses and lavender; large terraces of flower beds; a fountain with statues by Jean de Bologne from the fountain of Neptune in Florence; a long perspective; a folly called "The Tower of the Demoiselles"; and an elliptical rose garden, with over 1300 rosebushes in pastel colors around a basin.

The principal feature of the garden is a grand avenue from the gate to the château lined by yew trees shaped into cones, alternating with statues and vases.

The gardens also feature a large rectangle of chestnut trees providing shade, and avenues of hornbeam hedges 350 metres long on the west and south.

The park was originally the domaine of the Jean-Baptiste Lambert, the treasurer of the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV, who built a château there around 1641, and who commissioned Le Nôtre to design the gardens.

The park was purchased in 1843 by Pierre Carlier, the Chief of the French Police from 1849 to 1851, who helped organize the coup d'état of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852.

It includes basins, cascades and a water staircase; Italian terraces; and a fine collection of magnolias, camellias, rhododendrons, and plants of Australia, New Zealand and the Mediterranean.

The gardens have over seven thousand varieties of plants, particularly those that grow well in an acid soil, including camellias, magnolias, rhododendrons and hydrangeas.