Monday 7th SeptWe're off today to Chaumont to the Festival of Gardens held in the grounds of the chateau. It's a semi-permanent exhibition running for 6 months and different from other festivals in that the plants are in the ground instead of being in pots. Also it's not as crowded as Chelsea. It's very prestigious and gardeners from all over the world compete to be allowed one of 26 spaces. This year the theme is gardens of colour and ranges from the bizarre to the exotic to the downright weird.
First we go to the Chateau where David falls in love with 2 huge cedars on either side of the entrance. Lucy has filled us in on the history of Chaumont and the 2 powerful women who lived here, Catherine de Medici the King's wife and Diane de Poitiers his mistress. Diane has the smaller bedroom but it has a better view of the Loire River. The gardening expo extends to the chateau with interesting art exhibitions. We are rushing to see it all including the stables and the floral exhibits before lunch.
This one is fun: mirrors are part of the garden and you are reflected back and forth.
Then there's the one with purple washing hanging up that is actually very cleverly colour graduated from purple to blue at the back and the one that looks like red Christmas puddings.
Even the lunch in the festival restaurant carries on the colour theme with this spectacular dessert of passionfruit, chocolate and mandarin.
The wines were excellent local whites and is was a sleepy bus load that drove into Amboise for an afternoon's shopping and sight seeing.
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