The Parks
& Gardens
Visiting Amboise and the surrounding area
Touraine is known as "the Garden of France", and our hotel offers you a superb view of this garden, with its history, culture and romance. In the heart of the Loire Valley, a number of parks and gardens offer magical, gourmet, surprising and invigorating interludes! Discovering these gardens is a great way to visit Amboise and the surrounding area.
In Amboise, you can stroll through the gardens of the Château Royal, which offer an uninterrupted view of the Loire Valley, the landscaped grounds of the Château du Clos Lucé, which invite you to take a voyage of discovery in the footsteps of the genius Leonardo da Vinci, and the Pagoda de Chanteloup, a 44-metre-high structure that offers a view of the vast forest of Amboise.
Villandry
The Gardens of Villandry sumptuously recreate the spirit and the letter of the architectural layout adopted during the Renaissance under the influence of the Italian gardeners brought to France by Charles VIII.
You can discover three terraces on top of each other: the highest is the Water Garden, below is the Decorative Garden made up of two boxwood halls filled with flowers, and on the lower level is the Vegetable Garden, the most original section of the estate, forming a real chequerboard of colours, and the Jardin des Simples (a traditional garden from the Middle Ages).
Rivau
Adjacent to the Château du Rivau, an authentic medieval fortress, the 14 fairytale gardens take you on a journey through legendary and magical stories such as "Le jardin du Petit Poucet", "L'Allée des Fées", "Alice's Labyrinth" and many others. Each garden is inspired by a wonderful story that invites young and old to dream.
The Jardins du Rivau, classified as a "Remarkable Garden" by the French Ministry of Culture and a "Conservatory of the Fragrant Rose", are located in Léméré, 10 km from Chinon between Tours and Poitiers.
Chaumont-sur-Loire
Just 18 km from the Manoir Saint Thomas are extraordinary gardens, a source of inspiration and magic! At the heart of the Chaumont-sur-Loire estate, where the mighty, squat château watches over the valley, you can visit the park, its facilities and exhibitions all year round.
The International Garden Festival, created at Chaumont-sur-Loire in 1992, showcases a wide range of gardens around a single theme that is renewed every year. It is a veritable laboratory for contemporary garden design and landscape creation around the world.
