Featuring both French and English gardens, as well as a linden tree conservatory, the park at Château de La Motte Tilly is one of the most beautiful estates in Champagne.
A jewel of French architecture, surrounded by a balcony of verdant nature overlooking the Seine: this is how one might sum up the estate of La Motte Tilly, situated in Aube, in the south of the Champagne region. Built on the site of a former medieval fortress, construction of the present château began in 1754, based on plans drawn up by architect François-Nicolas Lancret for the Terray brothers. The most famous of these was the abbot Joseph Marie Terray, who was then Comptroller-General of Finances to King Louis XV.
Serving as both a country house and hunting lodge, the Terray brothers’ château has retained its clean lines and elegant façades.
Sadly, the name of the designer behind the La Motte Tilly gardens has been lost to history; however, their work aligns with the mainstays of mid-18th century landscape design.
Influenced by Rousseau and other Enlightenment philosophers, the English were the first to design gardens with a more irregular layout than those created in Versailles by Le Nôtre, who championed the idea of nature being domesticated by man.
Here, along meandering alleyways studded with groves and copses, the gardeners erected “follies”: pagodas and Chinese pavilions, pyramids, fake ruins, etc. – all of which made La Motte Tilly an exceptional conservatory.
In the year 1788 alone, Joseph Marie Terray’s nephew and heir planted 35,000 birch trees, 1,600 holly trees, Atlas cedars, Austrian black pines, and more. So the gardens would remain throughout the 19th century, until the estate’s new owner, the Count of Rohan-Chabot, decided to create distinctly French gardens (with straight alleys and bowling greens) at the front and rear of the château.
These successive design overlays have created a uniquely “mixed” garden, to use the term favoured by the man who lovingly tends to its care each and every day.
Jean-Marie Verfaillie is head gardener at the La Motte Tilly estate. While his personal tastes lean toward the French gardens, the man who walks these gravel pathways each day has endless insights to share about the estate. “It’s important to understand that one of the reasons English gardens were created was so their owners could cultivate rare species, brought back from the Orient or the Americas during the age of exploration, and present them to their guests,” he explains.
Sadly, a great many of these remarkable trees grown in La Motte Tilly were felled by a winter storm in 1999. “The arboretum was badly hit, but shortly afterwards this also gave us the idea of planting a ‘tilletum’ – a botanical collection made up of 70 different species of linden trees.” Doing so was a way of paying homage to the tilia – also known as the linden or lime tree – which is likely where La Motte Tilly or “linden hill” got its name, according to the writings of Jean-Marie Verfaillie.
More recently, this “tilletum” was listed as a “national collection” by the French government, which, as the head gardener notes, is a rare and prestigious distinction.
As for the French gardens found in the main courtyard and elsewhere around the château, these feature around 120 yew topiaries, which are sculpted twice a year using wooden frames. “This allows us to express the plants’ full potential, but also to maintain absolute consistency in the landscape’s panorama,” explains the head gardener, who is particularly meticulous when it comes to clipping the shrubs. “The potential arrival of heat waves means we have to be very careful. Trimming can be harmful, and might weaken the plant if it’s done at the wrong time.”
For the English gardens he practices “sustainable gardening,” which is quite unlike the approach used in the French gardens. Here, the gardener’s eye and instincts take precedence; it’s up to him to choose the right moment to prune the shrubberies or mow the grass.
“The English gardens provide vast spaces for exploration and viewing perspectives, but also denser and more understated spaces where you can wander and lose yourself. These are gardens for strolling around, where there should always be a surprise in store for the visitor.” This is why, in La Motte Tilly and elsewhere, these types of gardens are peppered with man-made grottoes, old windmills and the like, so there’s something to discover with every twist in the path. This is no less the case when we arrive at the rear of the château, which offers a sweeping view over the park, its canal, its reflecting pool, and the Seine in the distance: all this makes it a truly diverse garden providing spaces for contemplation, exploration and emotion.
