back
guides
help newsletters advertisers Booking: 0872 442 5038
Château de la Varenne
Parks and Gardens   Parks and Gardens

Fees and Opening days :
Open everyday inluding sundays and public holidays, from July 1st to September 15th, from 10 am to 12 am and from 2 pm to 5 pm.
The main hall is not open to the public for security reasons. Only groups are allowed inside.
- Entrance fee and access to the grounds : 2 Euros per person.
Entrance fee, short film on the history of the chateau, free access to the grounds : 4 Euros per person.
- Groups : Ffee upon request to the above contact.

Description :

The terrace "à la française".

A guided visit of the grounds is organised every year in June during the campaign "Mois des jardins". See day of visit on the national programm.
Considering the age of the plantations, on can come to the conclusion that the park has been designed around 1880, probably by the great-great grandfather of the actual owners... Is is hard to imagine the gardens of Pierre Merlin, when he lived there, at the turn of the 16th century ! We only own a fairly simple plan of the gardens, dated 1793 : the terrace was then divided into four grass-plots, which became in the 19th century one single grass-plot, surrounded by a box rim and spotted by cubic or round trimmed box-trees.
The grounds show definitely two different approaches : the terrace "à la française" and the park itself, a vast meadow dotted by distant clumps of trees, as far as one can see... A romantic walk along shaded banks of the river Saulx, stone benches now and then, allowing some rest and gorgeous points of view on the chateau, the river or the 17th century stone bridge of the village : all is combined to gratify the visitors.

The remarkable trees are indentified under their common and botanic names. A leaflet is given to Autumn 2002 : many trees have been planted after the December 1999 hurricane which put down more than 200 trees...
A bench by the Saulx.

The "chinese pavilion".