Every year, the International Garden Festival of Chaumont-sur-Loire offers a multitude of surprises to visitors who discover the new plant creations. The 31th edition will be held from 25 April to 5 November 2023 on the theme "Ideal garden, 30 years of green utopia".
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 doors to its chateau and surrounding park are open all year round, but the arguable star of the calendar is the garden festival from April to November, bursting with plant curiosities including some rare species, and unusual blooms usually considered unobtainable.
An ideal garden for the 31th anniversary of the festival
After 31 years (1992-2023) of creations inspired by historical or poetic, educational or ecological themes, Chaumont intends to reflect on what the "ideal garden" would or should be, at a time of intensive urbanisation, global warming, and the increased desire to get closer to nature.
Sobriety, self-sufficiency, permaculture, edible forests, green corridors... everything can be done to strengthen the resilience of gardens, to anticipate, act, recover and reduce vulnerability.
This is the challenge facing the designers of the Gardens of 2023, who have come up with projects that seek to open up avenues that will enable gardens - condensations of life and biodiversity - to resist the harmful effects of human activity on the environment.
Twenty-five international teams were selected by this year's jury and six 'green cards' were awarded to special guests. All in all, 33 new entries to discover on a very ecological theme!