June in the gardens of Chateau de Villandry in the Loire.
This means rose season!
As a flower and especially rose lover, Chateau de Villandry had long been on my wish list and in June 2025 we were celebrating holidays just an hour's drive from these beautiful Renaissance-style gardens.
It was a bright day and actually remarkably quiet, giving me plenty of time to photograph without crowds of people.
It is lovely to wander through the quiet gardens here and enjoy all the splendour.
The original gardens were laid out in the 16th century by Jean le Breton, but they were given their current form by Joachim Carvallo, who bought the ruined castle in 1906 and restored both the castle and the gardens. Carvallo took inspiration from 16th-century Italian and French garden art and created something magnificent. The Summer Garden was the last to be created. A wildflower garden; in the style of Piet Oudolf.
But back to roses: this part of the gardens is The Ornamental Garden of Love and you will find roses on stems in straight boxwood hedges. The pink roses symbolise tender love and romance. They soften the clean lines of the garden and I emphasised this by creating extra softness in the roses in the foreground.
The wall in the background shows something of the beautiful backdrop against which the roses are depicted.
As the daughter of a photographer, photography has been a big part of my life. I love nature and especially flowers, so you see this most in my work. I have worked as an independent make-up artist for over 15 years, developing my eye for detail. Composition.. Read more…