The gardens of Villandry

At Villandry, in Touraine, the gardens matter more than the château. Completed around 1536 for Jean Le Breton, finance minister to King Francis I, it is the last of the great Renaissance châteaux built along the Loire. Yet its gardens are recent: in the early 20th century, Joachim Carvallo and his wife Ann Coleman, who had bought the estate in 1906, recreated them in the spirit of the Renaissance, on three levels of terraces.

Seen from above, they read like a drawing. The ornamental garden lines up its clipped box embroidery; the decorative kitchen garden, the most famous part, combines nine squares of equal size where vegetables and flowers form geometric patterns, replanted twice a year; higher up, the water garden is arranged around a large pool. Along the paths appear the village church, the château and its reflections, and even the kitchen with its copper pans.

The photos were taken in high summer, when the colours of the kitchen garden are at their brightest. Royalty-free, they suit stories about gardening, heritage, the Loire Valley or travel in France, and can be downloaded for free on Pexels.