Les Jardins du Puygirault, Garden and tourist attraction in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent, Saumur, France
Les Jardins du Puygirault is a garden and tourist attraction in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent, near Saumur in the Maine-et-Loire department. The site is divided into around fifteen themed areas and holds over a thousand plant species, ranging from fruits and vegetables to medicinal herbs.
The gardens were created to trace the history of how people have grown and used plants over time, from early gathering gardens to more recent cultivation methods. The Fondation du Patrimoine has since listed the site as a place of heritage value, which requires the owners to open it to visitors on a regular basis.
One section is laid out as a medieval garden and another as an apothecary garden, where plants are grown the way they once were in the Anjou region. Walking through these areas, visitors can see firsthand how closely daily life was once tied to what grew in the ground.
A visit usually takes around an hour, and the grounds are easy to walk with a stroller or young children. There is a small sales area near the exit where visitors can buy herb plants such as mint or oregano to take home.
One of the themed areas is set inside a troglodyte grotto, a space carved into the tufa rock that is common in the Saumur area. Plants grow there under very different light and moisture conditions than those outside, which makes this corner unlike anything else on the grounds.
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