Garden of Courance Castle
Photo: Philippebajcik / CC BY-SA 3.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden at Courances is an Anglo-Japanese garden within the historic Château de Courances estate, south of Paris. It was created during the early twentieth-century restoration and reworking of the park under the Ganay family. The garden is associated especially with Berthe de Béhague, Marquise de Ganay, who established a Japanese hill-and-pond stroll garden to the east of the château in 1908.
History
Courances is primarily known as a major French water garden, with canals, basins, moats and flowing water forming the core of the landscape. In the early twentieth century, the grounds were restored and reshaped with the involvement of Achille Duchêne. In 1908, Berthe de Béhague created a Japanese hill-and-pond garden near La Foulerie, and Kathleen Lloyd Jones, an English gardener associated with Gertrude Jekyll’s circle, was employed to assist with the Japanese garden’s creation. After wartime decline, Jean-Louis de Ganay began restoring the grounds from 1948, while Philippine de Ganay took responsibility for the Japanese garden.
The Japanese garden was initiated in 1908; Kathleen Lloyd Jones is also associated with work on the Anglo-Japanese garden in the 1920s.
Design features
The Japanese garden is best described as an Anglo-Japanese hill-and-pond garden integrated into Courances’ larger water landscape. It includes water, islands / bankside scenery, Japanese-inspired planting, informal paths and a rustic tea-house setting near the former mill building known as La Foulerie. The garden should be treated as a Japanese-inspired garden room within a French château water garden, rather than as a fully independent canonical Japanese garden.