Les Chartreuses du château

The chartreuses are a rare architectural structure in France. They are open-air rooms located on a terrace overlooking the canals, connected by a succession of arcades.
The walls, around 4 meters high, were designed to create a succession of microclimates, allowing fruit production to be spread out over time while providing the best ripening conditions.

This type of architecture is similar to that of the Potager du Roi in Versailles or the Murs à pêches in Montreuil, created by the great gardener La Quintinie in the 17th century.
Spread over 4,000 m2 and nestling within the high walls of the Carthusian monasteries, five gardens evoke the evolution of the art of gardening in France. Moving from one garden to the next, we pass from one era to another.

Bouquetier Garden

Along the canal, in the shade of a bald cypress and an American oak, lies a long rectangular bed of perennials: herbaceous plants that flower for several years. These are herbaceous plants that flower for several years, their stems and flowers dying back each year to be reborn in the summer. These plants are of different heights, with staggered flowering, so that there's always a variety in full bloom.

Sculpted Vergé

Planted according to a classical design, the garden is entered via a pathway topped by arcades of pear trees and punctuated by columned fruit trees. It showcases the techniques perfected in the 17th century by Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie at the Potager du Roi in Versailles. These include multiple fruit forms: candelabra, fan, double cordons, U-shaped or double-U-shaped palmettes. Whether free or trellised, their perfectly balanced structure and reduced vegetation allow light to pass through, allowing sap to nourish all the fruit, which will be larger and more colorful.

Meditation Garden

A woven wicker enclosure surrounds a yew house and its garden of box and germander beds. On the wall, a fresco inspired by Giotto depicts Saint Francis of Assisi talking to the birds. It pays tribute to four people who have each played their part in the recent history of Ainay: "Georges-Henri the bird lover, Géraud the poet, Jeanne the soul of the place and Jean-Pierre the nature lover". Leaving the enclosure, you enter a quincunx of mulberry trees surrounding a pond whose water, a symbol of life, springs from a fountain.

The atmosphere of this garden, its fresco bathed in light, the water coming from the deep shade of the mulberry trees, is an invitation to meditation.

Cloîtres des Simples

The chartreuse is surrounded by a Renaissance-style promenade of linden trees, laid out in a series of arcades linked by a canopy of vegetation.

Between the cloister's walkway and the outside walls, a collection of simple plants is laid out in tiles. Here, you'll find a selection of medicinal, condiment, tinctorial and melliferous plants.
The heady scent of curry and the dyeing plant woad evoke the countless plants imported to France during the Renaissance. Surrounding the well, apple trees pruned into wheels, superimposed trays or May trees evoke the fashion of the period, when people liked to give shrubs beautiful but unusual shapes.

Parterres de Broderies

This chartreuse evokes the great era of French gardens, which reached their apogee in the 17th century under the impetus of Le Nôtre. The "parterres de broderie" (embroidered flowerbeds) are a characteristic feature, like a carpet laid out in front of the château , an extension of elegance and wealth. Another important feature is the trellis, a sumptuous decoration first created by Le Nôtre for the King at Versailles, whose fashion then spread to all the Seigneurs' gardens of the period. Here, the parterre of embroidery describes volutes and reproduces fleur-de-lys. White roses bloom abundantly in the boxwood borders. The central basin is made of yew. The trellis stands theatrically before the perspective of the canals.