Every year, the International Garden Festival of Chaumont-sur-Loire offers a multitude of surprises to visitors who discover the new plant creations.
Less than 200km from Paris between Tours and Blois, lies a natural oasis perched 40 metres above the wild River Loire: the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire. The château and its park are open year-round, but the highlight of the calendar is the garden festival from April to November, overflowing with botanical curiosities, rare species, and extraordinary blooms that are usually considered unobtainable.
A Look Back at the 2025 Edition of the International Garden Festival
In 2025, Chaumont-sur-Loire immersed its visitors in a life-size fairy tale. With the theme “Once upon a time in the garden,” the International Garden Festival transformed its plots into ephemeral settings inspired by the Arabian Nights, Perrault's tales, and Andersen's fairy tales. Among the most striking creations, L'Épopée du haricot magique (The Epic of the Magic Bean) offered a playful and poetic journey through the heart of an oversized plant, playing on scale and perception to question our relationship with living things. Other gardens invited visitors to stroll or read, in settings combining imagination, botanical innovation, and landscaping expertise. An enchanted interlude, conducive to reflection on current issues.
French or English, geometric or wild, always beautifully blooming, with vegetables or fragrant rose bushes: the gardens and parks of the Loire Valley amaze visitors as much as the chateaux they surround. Experience the art of outdoor living as it was during the Renaissance.
A very photogenic 2026 edition
What can we expect from the new edition of the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival? Although the winning projects will not be announced until February, we already know that participants—whether landscape architects, designers, scenographers, architects, or urban planners—had to draw inspiration from the world of cinema, the theme of the 2026 edition of the Festival. Visitors to the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire will be able to discover original creations inspired by the seventh art from April onwards.
By The editor
The editorial staff of France.fr follows the trends and news of destinations to bring you stories from France that reveal its innovations and traditions that make you long to (re) discover its territories.
