The Beautiful Hotel Garden At Catherine Deneuve’s Former Country Château Has Won A National Award

I’m almost too giddy to drive after staying at Domaine de Primard – a dreamy, blue-shuttered chateau on the banks of the river Eure in Normandy – but it’s not from sipping too much Calvados; it’s simply that I can’t pass a single rose bush without dipping my face into its soft-petalled blooms and inhaling deeply. I’m rose-drunk, and my sizeable nose is smudged with pollen.

Such English eccentricity doesn’t raise an eyebrow among the Parisian fellow guests who smile and nod as we pass on a verdant pathway – they’ve already seen me trailing water through the entrance hall after striding out at dusk on the night I arrived, impatient to explore the 100-acre garden despite deluging rain. As I waved away the offer of a brolly, no doubt my dripping hat and galoshes confirmed the French caricature of a Sitwell-esque English garden lover. 

But it turns out my British quirkiness isn’t completely out of place in this traditionally ordered French parc, whose woods, moat, parterres, ornamental lake and long avenues of billowing boxwood hedges have just been awarded Jardin Remarquable status by the French Ministry of Culture. For there’s a palpable Anglo influence in the old roses clambering through the branches of tall trees and tumbling over the little hump-backed iron bridge, which echoes the larger one at Monet’s Giverny garden, just down the road.

Surprisingly, the owner who introduced this English softening of Gallic orderliness was none other than the personification of immaculate French style: film star Catherine Deneuve. The muse to Yves Saint Laurent Deneuve stored her extensive collection of YSL couture at Primard during the 35 years she lived here. 

Deneuve originally commissioned the formal layout of Primard’s garden from acclaimed Belgian landscape architect, Jacque Wirst, but later asked her head gardener, Gérard Germaine to soften the edges a little. ‘Catherine wanted to feminise the garden,’ he tells me on a personal tour of the roseraie next day when the sun has broken through. ‘At the time I didn’t know anything about roses, but luckily my wife was a florist, so she taught me.’

As we progress slowly through a scented forest of French and English climbers – Adelaïde d’Orléans, Kathleen Harrop, Cécile Brunner, Desdemona, Vanessa Bell – Gérard deftly guillotines some heads and hands them over. Soon my arms are brimming with blooms as pale pink as the silk underwear Deneuve wears in Luis Buñuel’s erotic 1967 masterpiece, Belle de Jour, while Gérard chivalrously catches my falling notebook and writes down the names of damasks and gallicas in his neat French cursive. 

Gérard explains that in Deneuve’s time he lived in one of the cottages on the estate, but moved nearby when Guillaume Foucher and Frédéric Biousse, founders of the Fontenille group, bought the chateau from her in 2018 and converted the outbuildings into hotel accommodation. The former ten-bedroom house eventually opened in 2021 as a 39-room five-star retreat with a spa and restaurants, tennis and padel courts. Gérard was retained by the group and now works with Foucher on developing the garden and introducing permaculture principles.

The field where Deneuve’s grandchildren used to play is now a potager that supplies the dining room with herbs, vegetables and fruit from espaliered trees. There’s also a small farm with black sheep, Highland cattle and a couple of donkeys, all individually named. I’m charmed when one of Gérard’s handsome assistant gardeners leans over the gate, calling ‘Viens, Sara, viens Clothilde’, as black lambs trot towards him, but less so when one of the majestically horned cows nonchalantly lifts her tail to expel a formidable deluge of waste. Quel horreur! Perhaps it will end up as compost for the roses.

With Barbour wellies to borrow under the stairs, a rowing boat on the lake and no parked cars to marr the stunning vista from the wisteria-garlanded front door (they’re hidden among the trees), it’s easy to feel at home here. You can admire the chateau over the hedge as you’re doing lengths in the pool (Gérard tells me that Catherine and his wife were the most regular swimmers in Deneuve’s day), or just stroll around the woods and across makeshift canal crossings, espying Gérard’s familiar bucket hat as he prunes a hedge or the blur of a sous-chef dashing mid-service to gather herbs for the restaurant.

I spotted a young family taking early supper with their children in the conservatory, and you can also arrange private drinks or dinner on one of the tree-shaded jetties over the river. The two-storey spa is of course in a converted potting shed, offering Susanne Kaufmann treatments along with a small fitness room, sauna, hammam and two Japanese baths. The friendly multi-lingual staff will also arrange golf, canoeing, horse-riding and fishing trips further afield. Typically, when I apologised for walking a little mud into the entrance hall, the receptionist shrugged sweetly and said, ‘it’s fine, c’est normal, it’s a country home.’ In this spirit, children and dogs are also welcome.

Choose between a tall-windowed suite overlooking the river in the main house or a room with your own little garden in one of the cottages. All are decorated with the kind of discreet French elegance that Brits can only try to emulate using Pierre Frey fabrics, ceramics by Gien, Charolles, Maison Sarah Lavoine and Sylvie Coquet, and tableware by Elisabeth Monroy. I slept like a dream as breezes fluttered the curtains and a nightingale sang its heart out on the riverbank, feeling imbued with herbs and flowers in every cell of my body, not just from the garden, but also from the tea infusions, the massage and facial, and the bathroom products and interiors infused with Fontenille’s signature vetiver and cedar. 

Finally, having arrived in driving rain, I left in glorious sunshine, which felt like a metaphor for the transformational magic of Primard. As soon as I got home, I laid out to dry all the rose heads Gérard had given me, a delicately perfumed memory of my stay. Vive l’entente cordiale!

C&TH KEY NOTES

– Dish to ask for: From asparagus to zucchini, every seasonal vegetable dish is deliciously flavoured with herbs and flowers from Primard’s potager.

– Don’t miss: daily tea at 4pm, when you pile your plate high with freshly baked cakes in the old dining room and retire to an armchair in the drawing room or a table in the garden, along with a book and a pot of excellent tea.

– When to go: Garden colours transition through the year from spring bulbs to autumn dahlias, but go in May and June for the roses.

– Exceptional extra: Plant enthusiasts can book a personal tour of the garden with head gardener Gérard Germain (French interpreter available, if needed). Notebook advised!

THE LAST WORD

For a tryst or special celebration, the romance of this ravishing French country getaway, just six hours’ drive from London via Le Shuttle, can’t be beaten. 

BOOK IT

Double room from €300 per night (breakfast included) for a Superior room in low season, €430 in high season. Two-night minimum stay at weekends during high season. domainedeprimard.fontenille-collection.com