Learn how to make flower arrangements at Chenonceau, the only chateau in Europe with a full-time florist
Jean-François Boucher runs the Chenonceau flower workshop
Léonard de Serres
With its arches stretching gracefully over the river, Chenonceau is one of the best known chateaux in the Loire Valley. It is also famous for its flowers. All year round the 17 rooms in the chateau are filled with sumptuous flower arrangements. To keep them all looking perfect, a resident team of professional florists do as many as 200 arrangements every single week. They also produce arrangements for the restaurant, and for special events held at the château.
Many of the blooms and foliage come from the flower gardens. (These are quite separate from the ornamental gardens surrounding the house, which are also magnificent.)
If you book enough in advance, it is possible to spend a morning in the ‘Atelier Floral’ (Flower workshop) with Jean-François Boucher, the head florist at Chenonceau, learning how to make flower arrangements. Chenonceau is the only chateau in Europe to have its own full time florist, and although Jean-François Boucher and his team supplement the flowers grown on-site with bought-in flowers, they try to keep the arrangements seasonal.
Jean-François offers arrangement tips
Jean-Christophe COUTAND-MEHEUT
“The colours are very much chosen to go with the rooms. Diane de Poitiers’ room, for example, is blue. So the arrangements in that room have to be in harmony with that colour palette. There is a bit more leeway in the kitchens, for example, because the walls are stone, so there isn’t such a dominant colour scheme.”
The first thing you notice when you walk into the workshop is the amazing scent; a mixture of flower petals, damp moss, dry bark and green sap. We were given a pair of secateurs each, and chose the containers we were going to use. Each one was already filled with oasis and water.
“The first thing is to really cover the oasis and give your arrangement a background setting,” says Jean-François. “We usually keep things symmetrical, but you don’t have to. It depends what style you’re aiming for. The flowers in the chateau are meant to make visitors feel that it has been specially decorated for them. Once you are happy with your background, you can think of what colours and shapes you will use as the main focus.” He goes from person to person, tweaking a flower here, and a gold sprayed fern there.
Attendees offered a wide array of arrangements
Léonard de Serres
Along one wall there are buckets of flowers, foliage, vegetation and things sprayed gold and silver. The sheer variety is amazing. As well as actual flowers there are small cabbages on long stalks and reeds, ferns, moss, and lots of things I cannot even name in English.
“Quite nice,” he says, carefully removing a spray of gypsophila (baby’s breath) and clipping the stalk to the correct length. He slides it back into place. “You can position everything exactly where it needs to be. Ensure you remove all foliage that will be beneath the water. The metallic foliage lasts well, but it is expensive, and can be too much.”
Looking around at everybody else’s arrangements, it is astonishing how different they all are; from a presentation of tall red and orange spikes to a much smaller powder puff of pink roses and golden ferns.
“Don’t stop there. Keep going. You need to add a lot of flowers if it’s going to look like anything,” says Jean-François. “Make it rich, make it full, have courage. Now turn the containers and see what the arrangements look like from other angles. From the side, from the back if it’s going to stand in front of a mirror.”
The next floral workshop dates are September 26 and December 26. Tickets cost €90 and include entrance to the château and the ornamental gardens.
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