Photo : Lusseau Pascale / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Château de Courson
The Courson estate, in the Essonne, dates from the 17th century, when Guillaume de Lamoignon built a château surrounded by a classical park. In the early 19th century it passed to the Duke of Padua, a cousin of Napoleon I, who asked Louis Berthault, creator of Empress Josephine's garden at Malmaison, to turn the park into an English garden with curving paths and seemingly natural views. In 1860 the Bühler brothers planted new species and had the lake dug.
The estate has remained in the family of the Counts of Caraman since the 18th century. From 1920 the count, a friend of Albert Kahn, diversified the planting and created 'rooms' of rhododendrons and azaleas. In the 1980s his granddaughter Hélène Fustier, with the English landscape gardener Timothy Vaughan, restored the park, and the twice-yearly Courson plant days began, bringing together amateurs, botanists and nurserymen.
The forty-hectare park received the Parcs de France prize. It is best visited in autumn, when 2,000 varieties of trees and shrubs in warm colours are reflected in the lake.
