Le Clos du Coudray

Winner of the third prize for the "Best Park in France 2006 prize" . Covering 20,000m2 this garden has a series of themed gardens including a rose garden underplanted with perennials, a mixed border, a rock garden, an exotic garden, a shady garden with some fabulous hostas, a beautiful potager done French syle with borders of box and long grassy paths winding through large borders. I visited the garden in September of 2009 and it is certainly one of my favourite gardens in France.

The Clos du Coudray is a familly garden begun in 1973 by Jean and Marie-Christine Lebret and is now a wonderfully mature series of gardens, each of which has been set up with a fantastic eye for colour and form. Over the years the garden has grown and there is also a nursery on site.

 

The first garden you see as you enter the garden is the Rose Garden. A fantastic pergola has been built for the climbing roses and underneath is a mix of roses and perenials in a lovely relaxed planting scheme which really shows the roses off to perfection.

A stream runs through much of the garden and sets off perfectly the mixed borders running along the edges. Planting is dense and no space is wasted.

Every garden reveals a fine eye for detail, perhaps reflecting Mr Lebrets former career as a photo-journalist.

I visited in autumn and the colours in the autumn garden were superb. I hope to visit again in spring though as there are many wonderful spring flowering plants and shrubs in the garden.

Clos du Coudray has a lovely exotic garden. This has been relocated as the original space was not big enough for the lush growth of exotic plants. To create the garden they dug down to make the garden on a slope allowing you to observe some of the plants from below with the sun shining through the leaves. It also allowed them to create a stagnant stream at the bottom, providing the moisture that many exotic plants need.

At the end of the main part of the garden there is another section to the side and here are collections of dahlias and day lillies, the mass of dahlias looked wonderful when I was there. This then leads to a grasses garden with a large range of different grasses all planted in a naturalistic style.

After you have looked at the garden and found lots of inspiration there is a large garden centre - heaven!

Garden Guide:

The garden and garden centre is open from the 1 April to 31 October from 10h00 to 19h00.

The garden centre is also open from November to March from 10h00 to 16h30 every day in March and from Monday to Thursday November to February. (Closed 15 Dec to 15 Jan)

Address:

This garden is situated north of Rouen and south of Dieppe.

Le Clos du Coudray

14 Rue du Parc Floral

76850 Etaimpuis

Tel: 02 35 34 96 85