Eyrignac Gardens

The manor of Eyrignac has been in the same family since the fifteenth century, and the gardens as they stand were remade from the 1960s by Gilles Sermadiras, who restored the eighteenth-century French formal layout after a nineteenth-century English landscaping had blurred it. The material is almost entirely green: hornbeam, yew, box and cypress clipped into avenues, arcades, cones and hedged rooms, so the effect is architecture rather than flowers, holding its shape year-round. Everything is cut by hand with shears rather than machines, which takes several full-time gardeners around six months of the year. A white garden and a rose walk add colour in season.

What you actually see

• The green architecture - hornbeam and yew clipped into avenues and rooms.
• The hand clipping - gardeners working with shears rather than machines.
• The manor - a Perigord house at the centre of the layout.
• The white garden - a seasonal planted contrast to the evergreen structure.

When to go

April to October; the structure holds all year, so even winter has form, but the gardens keep reduced opening then. Roses peak in June. Summer evenings sometimes open with lighting.

Honest expectations

This is a garden of shape rather than flowers, and visitors expecting colour can be disappointed. It is compact, an hour or two. Prices are high for the size.

Nearby

Sarlat lies southwest; the Dordogne castles are south.