Travel Journal

Travelling Through Gardens: Four Journeys for 2027

From the great English gardens of Sussex to the villas of Lake Como, the coast of Normandy and the landscapes of the Dordogne, our 2027 garden journeys take us to four very different regions

September 29, 2026

Gardens have always been an important part of the world of My French Country Home.

Perhaps that is inevitable when you spend so much time visiting beautiful houses. Very often, the garden tells you just as much about a home as the rooms inside it. It tells you how people live there, what they chose to preserve, what they have added and, sometimes, what has been growing in the same place for generations.

Through the magazine, our books and our travels, we have been lucky enough to visit gardens all over France and beyond. Some are famous and meticulously documented; others belong to private homes and are rarely open to visitors. And while we love both, we have learnt that the most memorable visits often have less to do with how well known a garden is and more to do with who is showing it to you.

Walking through a garden with its owner is a very different experience. They can tell you why a particular tree was planted, what was here before, which part never quite worked, or how the garden changes through the seasons. A head gardener notices things we would otherwise walk straight past. And travelling with someone who has spent years studying gardens gives you the vocabulary and history to understand what you are looking at.

This thinking is very much behind our garden journeys for 2027.

We have chosen four regions with strong but very different gardening identities: Lake Como, Sussex, Normandy and the Dordogne. Each journey includes exceptional gardens, but none is simply six days of visiting one garden after another. We want to understand the region around them too, through its homes, people, food, villages, history and landscape.

And because our groups never exceed 12 guests, we can visit places that simply wouldn’t work with a large tour group and spend proper time with the people who welcome us.

Lake Como

Villas, Gardens & Life Around the Lake

Lake Como is a new destination for MFCH in 2027, and perhaps the most dramatic of our four garden journeys.

Here, the gardens cannot really be separated from the landscape. The mountains rise steeply from the water, leaving generations of gardeners to work with difficult terrain. The result is a succession of terraces, staircases, balustrades and pergolas descending towards the lake, planted with cypress, wisteria, camellias and old magnolias that thrive in its unusually mild microclimate.

We begin in Como, before moving to quieter Varenna for the second part of the week. Rather than experiencing the lake from a single base, we’ll cross it by boat and explore on foot, visiting villages and some of its great villas and gardens, including Villa del Balbianello, Villa Carlotta and Villa Melzi. A private boat day gives us the chance to see these estates from the water too, which is, after all, how many of them were originally intended to be approached.

Our guide here is Monica Ginnaio, an Italian art historian and travel designer who knows Lake Como intimately. It is precisely this local knowledge that we value: not simply arriving at a beautiful villa, but understanding its history, its architecture and its place within the landscape.

Villas & Gardens of Lake Como
with Monica Ginnaio — May 3rd–8th, 2027

Discover the Lake Como journey

Sussex

The Art of the English Garden

Sussex is particularly close to Sharon’s heart. She was born there, and returning with an MFCH group feels a little like sharing another part of home.

The county also happens to contain some of the most influential gardens in England. During our week, we’ll visit Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Pashley Manor and Nymans, four names that will be familiar to anyone with a love of English gardens, but each with a completely different personality.

There is plenty to learn here about planting, structure and the particular looseness that makes a great English garden look as though it has simply grown that way. But Sussex also has a long creative history, and we wanted the journey to reflect that.

Alongside gardens and historic country houses, we’ll meet local artists and makers, explore villages and spend time discovering the creative community that has long been drawn to this corner of England. One of our visits takes us to Bloomsbury Revisited, for a private workshop with its founders and a glimpse into a contemporary studio inspired by the artistic legacy of Charleston.

We’ll come home each evening to The Star in Alfriston, a restored historic inn in the heart of a Sussex village, exactly the sort of place we like to use as a base for a week.

A Garden Journey Through Sussex
with Sharon Santoni — May 11th–16th, 2027

Discover the Sussex journey

Normandy

Gardens Between Countryside & Coast

Normandy is home territory for MFCH, and after years of living and working here, there are still places we love returning to.

Our spring journey begins with perhaps the most famous garden in France: Monet’s Giverny. Rather than making it a quick stop, we’ll spend the morning there before lunch in the village and continuing towards Honfleur.

From our base on the coast, the week moves between gardens, historic châteaux and some of Normandy’s most important sites. We’ll travel as far as Mont Saint-Michel, spend time along the D-Day coastline at Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery, and make room for antique shops and the smaller towns we enjoy along the way.

Leading us is Amy Kupec Larue, who has spent three decades living, working and travelling in France and has guided garden tours since 2005. Amy has an extraordinary knowledge of French gardens and plants, but also of the history surrounding them. With her, a garden visit becomes a conversation about why it looks the way it does, how it has evolved and where it belongs within the wider story of the region.

That is particularly important in Normandy, because this journey isn’t exclusively about gardens. It is about seeing how they fit into a region shaped by its coastline, history, architecture and countryside.

A Spring Journey Along the Normandy Coast
with Amy Kupec Larue — May 21st–26th, 2027

Discover the Normandy journey

Dordogne

Behind the Gates of Private Gardens

If Normandy combines gardens with the coast and history, the Dordogne offers something quite different.

Here, gardens feel deeply connected to the landscape: château grounds, Renaissance influences, old manor houses and properties that have evolved gradually with the people who care for them. The region is also home to a remarkable concentration of gardens recognised with France’s Jardin Remarquable designation.

This is our most garden-focused journey of the four, once again led by Amy Kupec Larue.

Of course, we will visit important established gardens. But some of the moments we are looking forward to most will happen behind private gates. Throughout the week, we’ll be welcomed into properties by the people who own, created or care for them. For us, that changes everything. Instead of simply admiring a garden, we can ask questions and hear directly about the decisions, work and years that have gone into creating it.

And between those visits, there is the Dordogne itself. We’ll explore villages such as Domme, spend time in historic estates and country houses, eat well and travel through one of France’s most beautiful rural landscapes.

Dordogne: A Journey Through Gardens
with Amy Kupec Larue — June 1st–6th, 2027

Discover the Dordogne journey

One thing we never want our garden journeys to become is a checklist.

We would rather visit fewer places and have the time to understand them properly. To walk around a garden with the person who created it. To sit down for lunch afterwards. To notice the village on the way there, or stop at a shop we love on the way home.

It is also why the hotel matters, why the restaurants matter and why we think carefully about who accompanies each journey. A beautiful garden may be the reason for travelling somewhere, but it is rarely the only thing we remember when we come home.

For 2027, these four journeys allow us to look at gardens in four completely different landscapes. Italian lakeside villas, great English gardens, the green countryside and coast of Normandy, and the old estates of the Dordogne.

And that, for us, is part of the pleasure of travelling through gardens: there is always another way to make one, another person to learn from, and another gate we would like to open.