Vallée de l'Eure · Normandie
A Fontenille Collection château an hour from Paris on the banks of the Eure — a Wirtz garden held for thirty-five years, three tables across the property, and a country estate…
La note
A château an hour from Paris kept around a Jacques Wirtz garden, with three tables and a kitchen garden running the menu. The shortest journey out of the city; one of the quietest landings.
From the editors · Vedere House
Les particularités
Primard is a garden first. Jacques Wirtz drew the parterres thirty-five years ago, and the rest of the property has been arranged around them ever since — a parc bordered by the Eure, a potager kept to permaculture, a rose garden of two hundred and fifty varieties, and a château set back inside the hedges. Fontenille took over the running of the estate, restored the houses behind the gardens and left the gardens themselves alone. They are labelled Jardin remarquable, which is the smallest fair claim that can be made about them.
“The shortest road out of Paris that leads, by the time it ends, to the slowest country.
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The kitchen reads the property in three rooms. Ottavio keeps the long Italian lunch under the vines — a table that arrives in dishes and stays late. Bistrot Martin takes the bistronomic evening from the potager directly behind it. The Table d'Hôtes is the closer, communal supper for the nights that don't need a card. The same garden walks into all three, which is what holds them in one register.
The trip is for the weekend that doesn't want to leave Paris and doesn't want to be in it. An hour from the city, twenty-five minutes from Giverny, the river running through the park, the heated pool open from April. Plan two nights and stay three. The garden is at its loudest in May and June; the orchard runs through summer; the autumn keeps the gardens open into the colder light, and the spa holds the rest of the day.
Moments choisis
01
Thirty-five years of one hand on the same hedges. The parterre is read first; the potager, the rose garden and the orchard all answer to it. The estate's gardener still walks his wheelbarrow past in the morning.
02
Ottavio for the Italian lunch outside, Bistrot Martin for the longer evening, the Table d'Hôtes for the closer night. The kitchen garden runs through all three; the menu reads the same hand even when the room changes.
03
A footbridge over the river, an island under the planes, a path back to the spa. The wider estate is the part that does most of the work — the river-cut park, the meadows, the farmyard with its Highland cattle and Ouessant sheep.
Dans la maison
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