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# Autumn Plant Days fair at Château de Chantilly near Paris with honorary guest William Christie
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/est-takoi-angliiskii-khrestomatiinyi-siuzhet-kak-selskaia-vystavka-tsvetov-i-ovoshchei-stanovitsia-glavnym-sobytiem-goda/
- Published: 2026-10-27T13:06:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-27T13:20:23.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Paris, Nature, Reportage

There is a classic English plot in which a village flower and vegetable show becomes the event of the year. In Wodehouse, Lord Emsworth, master of Blandings Castle, will go to considerable lengths to see his pumpkin take first prize at the Shrewsbury show. If this strikes you as an exaggeration, you simply do not know how seriously European gardeners take their traditional fairs and flower markets, the French and the English above all.

At the beginning of October I visited the Plant Days at the Château de Chantilly near Paris. No prizes were awarded for the handsomest turnip, but everything about the occasion seemed somehow un-commercial, as though lifted from a book or a film about an idyllic pastoral: an unhurried country life in fine estates, with its cares about pelargoniums and hydrangeas.

The fair is held twice a year, in spring and in autumn. More than two hundred nurseries from all over Europe descend on the castle park, and alongside them stand the stalls of landscape designers, craftsmen and makers of tools and planters. Visitors stroll between the marquees, choose rare varieties and take counsel from the gardeners. Tulips, which at home we would pay premium retail prices for, are 1 euro apiece. Some will say it is dull, but for me it is a festival format at which things are genuinely interesting.

Each fair has its own theme and its own guest of honour. In spring it was Christian Louboutin. The designer has long been passionate about botany, and at Chantilly he took over an entire marquee with large photographs of his gardens at Kerdalo in Brittany. That garden was begun in 1965 by a Russian émigré, Prince Pyotr Volkonsky, and Louboutin bought it in 2021\. In autumn the guest of honour was the conductor William Christie, founder of the early music ensemble Les Arts Florissants and a great lover of gardens. In his honour the autumn fair was titled “Plant Symphonies”, and the nurseries did their best to arrange their stands like musical compositions. Over the weekend Christie and his ensemble gave several concerts at the château.

At the close, the best nurseries and plants received prizes. One of them is called “The Three Botanical Graces”, after the painting by Raphael that hangs here too, in the château’s museum.

Remember how, in that detective story, the garden society’s annual flower show would have passed without incident had there not been a murder next to the fortune-teller’s tent? Happily, there were no murders at Chantilly, and everything else felt very bookish, far from any shameful bustle.

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Photographs: Muriel Vatrin