HEUDICOURT CASTLE GARDENS

The least known of the parks and castles of Vexin: a superb pink brick castle, surrounded by a moat, built between 1574 and 1661, furnished with many souvenirs of Madame de Maintenon and the Empire. But one comes here above all for a beautiful French-style park, preceded by a magnificent avenue of plane and lime trees more than 1 km long. The gardens were designed at the end of the 17th century according to a French-style drawing that is still preserved today: flowerbeds, groves, star-shaped paths, a theatre of greenery, a carriage roundabout or merry-go-round, and perspectives opening onto the countryside thanks to the invisible presence of wolf jumps.
Terraces at the corners of the former park boundaries still exist, and one covers vaulted rooms. It was connected to its counterpart located symmetrically to the north-south axis of the castle by a suspended walkway which has now disappeared. Three cedars of Lebanon were planted in 1804 by Count Estève during the coronation of Napoleon.