Loire Valley Parks and Gardens: Villandry, Chaumont and Chenonceau

Half of what you see at a Loire château is outdoors. Some gardens are the reason to go. Planning Loire Valley excursions? Here are the gardens, their seasons and their tickets.

The gardens at a glance: season, ticket and hours

Figures come from each estate's own website, read in September 2026. Gardens are at their best from late spring to early autumn, but Villandry and the Chaumont estate stay open through winter.

Villandry: Renaissance gardens and a gardens-only ticket

Villandry was built in 1532, and it has had gardens beside it ever since. They changed with every fashion, from French formal beds to an English landscape park. Between 1908 and 1918 Joachim Carvallo, who had bought the château, rebuilt them in the Renaissance spirit, using old plans, archaeology and period books.

The result is the ornamental kitchen garden you see in every photograph, with terraces of ornamental beds and a water garden above it. The family has kept adding: a herb garden in the 1970s and the Sun Garden in 2008. Since 2009 the gardeners have worked without chemical treatments. If the rooms do not interest you, buy the €8.50 gardens-only ticket.

Chaumont-sur-Loire: the International Garden Festival, 22 April–1 November 2026

Chaumont-sur-Loire is a château, a historic park and, since 1992, the home of the International Garden Festival. Each season brings about 30 new gardens, and the Centre-Val de Loire Region has owned the estate since 2007. The 2026 festival season runs from 22 April to 1 November 2026.

Allow three hours for the festival gardens alone, the estate says. A day ticket costs €21 in high season and €16 from 2 November, and a two-day ticket is €36. From September to 25 October the estate opens 10:00 to 19:00, with last château entry at 18:15. Onzain station, about 2 km away, is 20 minutes from Saint-Pierre-des-Corps; show your same-day train ticket and you pay less. Source: domaine-chaumont.fr.

Chenonceau's gardens on the Cher

Château de Chenonceau has two formal gardens beside the river. Diane de Poitiers created the larger one, a parterre of 12,000 square metres on the water; its present pattern is by Achille Duchêne. Catherine de Médicis' garden is smaller, 5,500 square metres, and faces the park.

Walk further and you reach a maze of 2,000 yews in a 70-hectare park, a flower garden of more than a hectare that supplies the château's arrangements, and the 16th-century farm. The gardens close 30 minutes after the château, so leave them for the end of your visit.

Clos Lucé: Leonardo's inventions in the park

At Clos Lucé in Amboise, the park is part of the museum. You walk among 20 life-size models built from Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, and you can climb aboard the tank or turn the screw. Translucent canvases three to four metres high hang in the trees, and a six-stop audio trail adds his notes on botany and the body.

Below the manor, Leonardo's Garden is planted with the pines, cypresses and plants that appear in his paintings. More on the manor itself is on Loire Valley châteaux.

Garden seasons: what each month brings

The festival year at Chaumont-sur-Loire runs from 22 April to 1 November, and that is the window when every garden in the valley is planted up. Tours has about 247 hours of sunshine in July against about 65 in December, according to Météo-France's 1991–2020 averages, so summer light is long and winter light short. On hot days, visit gardens in the morning.

From November to March the beds are bare, but Villandry's gardens stay open, as do Chaumont's parks. Villandry's château itself is closed from 12 to 27 November 2026. The weather detail for each month is on Loire Valley weather.

Tours that include a garden

Most château days give you time in the gardens alongside the rooms. The days below put a garden at the centre of the visit.