Villandry isn’t just about beautiful vegetables. The gardens at this gorgeous chateau are also packed out with fruit trained into all manner of shapes.
The fruit trees in the potager are planted mainly around the edges of the nine plots, and are either neatly-pruned pears, espalier apples or cordons.
Cordon pears.
The espalier applies form a low hedge which runs around the edge of each of the nine plots.
Any trees permitted to grow into more of a tree-like shape are still pruned into neat pom-pom structures.
At the very back of the garden is where the real training action happens, though. The flint wall closing off the gardens is decorated with candelabra espaliers: pears and apples trained into a religious symbol.
But like all good storytellers, I’ve saved the best bit until the last: the grapes.
Around the edges of the potager are two galleries covered in pergolas. They make great places to loiter and gaze out across the gardens, but they are also gorgeous in themselves, covered as they are with grape vines. In the summer the grapes hang down and almost tickle your head as you walk along.
They also cover the great wall to the right of the chateau.
The clever thing about all the fruit at Villandry is that it doesn’t take up ridiculous amounts of space. It is a feature, but not the dominating feature, of the potager, and that is achieved through careful pruning and training so that apple trees become small boundary markers, pears become exclamation marks within beds, and trees that would be unruly if they had half the chance are neat and well-behaved.
10% off at Victoriana Nurseries
Anyone visiting Victoriana from F&F will automatically get a discount on their order. Click the link above.
Image a day
Linda Perry
my husband ate some of the grapes 2 years ago-probably not supposed to but others were also.