Chateau de Bosmelet, park and gardens; a garden in the north of France

Visit Chateau de Bosmelet gardens

The Chateau de Bosmelet is in Normandy between Dieppe and Rouen. Its garden has been classified as one of the "Remakable Gardens" of France. It is known for its rainbow coloured potager known as the Potager Arc en Ciel.

Explore the gardens of the Chateau de Bosmelet

If you want to see a French-style potager updated to make a very modern garden then this is the garden to visit. (Potager is the French word for vegetable garden).

The kitchen garden covers two acres and a part of this is given over to Baroness Laurence de Bosmelet's rainbow (arc en ciel) kitchen garden which won a gold medal in the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show. The vegetables along with fruit and flowers are laid out in a rainbow colour scheme and rarely have vegetables looked so beautiful.

More than 900 varieties of vegetables, fruit and flowers are laid out in the design. The colours are split into 4 main groups: amber, saphire, ivory and garnet. These blocks of colour are then repeated in a formal pattern and the overall effect is stunning.

The ideas from the Potager Arc en Ciel garden were used in the Chelsea Flower Show. This is the first French garden to have competed at Chelsea but perhaps others will now be inspired by their success.

Elsewhere in the potager there is a pond, a cut-flower area and an asiatic potager. The potager has a huge and superbly colourful cut flower area.

There are also more traditional gardens to admire at the Chateau de Bosmelet. These were designed three centuries ago by Colinet who was the head gardener under Le Nôtre who designed the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles.

The gardens are laid out with a central green area with the potager garden on its western side and the Barnyard garden on the east. The longest avenue of lime trees in Europe is a part of the garden.

The Barnyard garden includes colour-themed borders, a rose pergola, a large pond and a lovely long border along the length of a walled part of the garden.

The remains of a World War 2 missile launch ramp used by the Wehrmacht can also be discovered in the grounds.

The Chateau de Bosmelet garden guide

The gardens are open from June 15 to early September; Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Mondays, 13h00 to 18h00.

This garden is situated in Normandy in north west France between Dieppe and Rouen.

Address: Chateau de Bosmelet, Le Bosmelet, 76720 Val-de-Scie, France

Prices are 7 euros for adults with under 10s visiting for free.

Gardens to visit nearby

Another excellent reason to visit the rainbow potager of Bosmelet is that there are a number of other great gardens just kilometers away in this garden-rich corner of France.

The Jardins d'Agapanthe and the Jardin Plume to name just a couple of them. If you are visiting in late winter then the Jardins de Bellevue has the national collection of hellebores to admire.

You can find more local travel ideas in the North West France guide,