A true celebration of the imagination, the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire, a castle of dreams, returns from April 19 to November 2, 2025, with an edition that cultivates wonder. Under the theme "Once Upon a Time in the Garden," 25 creations stand as botanical fables, somewhere between folklore and critical ecology.
Every spring, Chaumont-sur-Loire sheds its dormant finery to become a fertile stage once more, a verdant theater where storytelling takes root. Visitors come not only to contemplate, but to listen, to breathe in the atmosphere, to wander through narratives of shadow and light, moss and metal, where the absurd mingles with pure emotion. For this 2025 edition, 10 gardens stand apart from the main garden, like chapters in a novel that the earth itself has decided to write.
Fantastico Pinocchio (Italy) – A Moral in Compost
Collodi's fable unfolds in a spiral: a red rope of morning glories, a wooden theater, reflections of consciousness. The garden designed by Priola and Filosa makes each visitor a puppeteer. Reclaimed wood, Venetian vine poles—everything is given a second life. And what if lying made the stems grow longer?
Himalayan Rhapsody (India) – Mental Altitude
The studio unTAG Architecture & Interiors has placed a miniature Annapurna on the banks of the Loire: terraces of white pebbles, misty rhododendrons, slate and Tibetan horns blur the line between mountain and myth. Everything there vibrates with a distant, almost sacred breath.
The Island of Felicity (France) – Floating Utopia
The designers envisioned botanical rafts, free from their roots, adrift between dream and reality. Camellias, dwarf wisteria, and eucalyptus create a weightless archipelago. Here, the garden becomes a promise of elsewhere.
Flora and Zephyr (Belgium) – Rose and Wind
Two wind turbines disguised as wicker columns set in motion a ballet of pollen, guided by the weather. Under programmed LEDs, the roses tell their story at the speed of the wind. A techno-poetic garden, economical and sensual.
The secret garden of Argoat (Brittany) – Intimate moors
Laser-engraved Ogham symbols, acoustic menhirs, curlew calls… this miniature corner of Brittany evokes a legend more than a territory. Dwarf pines, heather, and kersantite limestone compose a granite composition where the roots whisper in Breton.
100 Years of Sleep (Quebec) – Foam Bed for Anxious Climates
Beneath flax tubes, a bed of sphagnum moss, dormant seeds, and a programmed dormancy. This garden speaks of waiting, patience, and resilience. In this time of climate crisis, it is a Sleeping Beauty that will germinate, slowly, by All Saints' Day.
Tales from the Alhambra (Spain) – Geometría encantada
3D-printed azulejos, rectilinear cypress trees, shadowy mashrabiya screens: this is a modern homage to Andalusian elegance. Between travertine and the scent of jasmine, Washington Irving stands discreetly by the pools.
The Epic of the Magic Bean (Netherlands) – Compost, sky and urine
A giant bean climbs a vertical worm composter fed with recycled urine. You climb it via a spiral staircase, up to a misted cloud of algae, in an atmosphere of raw fantasy.
Barochories (Portugal) – Sowing Gusts
Parachute capsules suspended from stainless steel cables disperse achenes and knowledge about barochoric dispersal. A subtle allusion to mounted Portuguese, the garden flies with the wind, teaching with every gust.
The Garden of Reflections (Switzerland) – Inverted Sky
Black reflecting pools mirror daffodils and miniature beech trees. Thanks to a plexiglass ring, the sky becomes the ground. A seemingly simple device, yet breathtakingly poetic. Water circulates within it in a loop, filtered by sedges, collected from the castle rooftops. Here, every drop counts.
Gardens of stories, stories of territories… What the festival offers is neither folklore nor folklore-bashingIt's a reinterpretation. Traditions, tales, and myths are re-rooted in their land. Each garden is a fragment of reinvented terroir: Brittany laser-engraved, Andalusia printed, or the Himalayas revisited. Plants are not secondary, but protagonists. At Chaumont-sur-Loire, the garden becomes a text, and each visitor, a reader in awe.
