DOMAINE DE MONTLAUR

Olive tree paths lined with irises, beds of roses, lavender, hedges pruned into topiaries, remarkable trees ... out of time, the romantic park of Domaine de Montlaur invites you to dream. After a long shady path, the garden opens onto a vast lawn where majestic cypresses evoking Italy stretch towards the sky. At the back of the garden, boxwood paths wind their way and get lost in the darkness of pine trees. Mysterious, overlooking a river, the small grove that closes the walk offers the vision of a poetic and secret universe .

Created at the end of the 19th century for the Mas family, the Domaine de Montlaur park is one of the great landscaping achievement s of the flourishing era of Languedoc wine estates. It has since undergone very few transformations, the swimming pool having been built on the site of a basin never executed.
Labeled by the ETBS (European Boxwood & Topiary Society ) the garden has several remarkable topiary elements.
Considered one of the most beautiful gardens in the Aude, the Domaine de Montlaur park received the first gardens prize of Aude departement 2022.
Exclusively reserved for our guests in residence, the park is open to visitors each year, the first weekend of June as part of the "Rendez-vous aux jardins" event.

On the other side of the road that runs along the park of the castle of Montlaur, the gardens of the cottage have a country air. Former vegetable gardens of this "ramonétage ", a long building once inhabited by the "ramonés" (the people who took care of the horses on the estate), they now consist of various walled spaces. It is accessed by a Muscat alley that leads to a wide lawn framed by cypresses where fruit trees, a vegetable garden of aromatic herbs, another of tomatoes surround a swimming pool.

Higher up, a few stone steps are crossed, perennials and roses run along the wall of the Maison du Village where a Muscat of Hamburg trellis stretches.. A hundred-year-old almond tree, oleanders and lavenders frame the summer dining room of the house. Separated by a small wall of laurels, the small gardens continue grassed up to a gravelly courtyard where opuntia aciculata (prickly pears) gild themselves in the sun in the company of invading fig trees.

The gardens of the cottage won the first prize of the Aude gardens .