Marqueyssac Gardens

I went to Marqueyssac sceptical. Topiary, to me, had always belonged to the same category as ornamental fountains and gravel raked into patterns — the kind of fussy, controlled gardening that announces a great deal of money and very little soul. Then we walked out onto the ridge, where 150,000 hand-clipped boxwoods roll away in rounded green waves, and I revised my position within about a minute. There is something almost geological about it, a frozen sea of clipped foliage following the spine of the hill, and it works on you whether you approve of it intellectually or not.

The green waves

The gardens sit on a long, narrow promontory between Beynac and La Roque-Gageac, and the design exploits that geography beautifully. The boxwoods were first planted in the nineteenth century and given their distinctive rounded, swelling shapes by a later owner influenced by Italian gardens. They are clipped by hand twice a year — no machines, the staff insist — which over a hundred and fifty thousand plants is a labour I find genuinely difficult to comprehend. We arrived just after a clipping cycle, the surfaces crisp, and Lia said it looked like a landscape made of pistachio ice cream. She was not wrong.

What saves Marqueyssac from being merely pretty is the walk. Six kilometres of paths thread out along the promontory, some shaded by holm oaks and cyclamen, and you can lose the crowds within ten minutes by simply choosing the longer route. We took the cliffside path, narrow and dramatic, with the Dordogne dropping away below and the rooflines of La Roque-Gageac visible through the trees. There are peacocks, which Lia adored and I tolerated, and a small via ferrata for the children who find boxwood insufficiently exciting.

The view at the end

The promontory ends in a belvedere, 130 metres above the river, and this is the payoff. From here the whole central Dordogne arranges itself in front of you: Beynac’s castle on its crag to the left, Castelnaud answering it across the valley, La Roque-Gageac tucked under its cliff directly below, and the river looping between them through a patchwork of walnut groves and tobacco fields. I have stood at a lot of viewpoints in this valley, and this is the one that ties them all together — you can see four of the region’s headline sights from a single stone parapet.

We stayed late, because on Thursday evenings in summer the gardens light thousands of candles along the paths and a small ensemble plays. Walking those green waves by candlelight, with the valley going blue beneath us, I fully abandoned my prejudice against topiary. Some things are fussy and controlled and still, somehow, beautiful. I came to scoff and left having booked nothing, bought nothing, and changed my mind about an entire category of gardening, which is more than most attractions manage.

When to go: April to October for the full gardens; the candlelit Thursday evenings run July and August and are worth planning around. Spring brings cyclamen along the paths; autumn brings the valley’s best light. Come late afternoon to catch the belvedere as the sun drops west over the river.