Flowers and food at the rose festival in Gerberoy - 13rd september 2020

 

Escaping routine is easy with a visit to the rose festival in Gerberoy roughly halfway between Paris and the Channel Tunnel/ferry port of Calais. Held this year on 13 September, the festival brings together floral decoration and food in a setting of half-timbered buildings, gorgeous gardens and atmospheric tea-rooms and restaurants.

 

One of the organisers and most active promoters of the rose festival in Gerberoy, writer Rosemary Brown discovered the village in 1999 while living in Paris with her husband David Stanton, British Ambassador to UNESCO. In her own words: 

“I fell in love with it on a cold, wet, grey day […] I joined the Comité des Fêtes straightaway to help plan the festival and volunteer on the day. I run the 'Brasserie sous les Halles'. I love that the women of Gerberoy gather in one of our kitchens early on the morning of the festival to make baguettes.

“I love Gerberoy's heritage, its gardens, its cobbled streets, its treasure chest of 17th- and 18th-century homes, its nearby forest, its eccentricities (with 115 citizens, it's a small village, but Gerberoy is actually France's smallest town because we have a Hotel de Ville). Gerberoy was asleep for centuries until artist Henri Le Sidaner awakened it in 1901, turning the ruins of its chateau into an Italianate garden and planting rose bushes wherever he could. And artists are still coming.”

 

As well as Les Jardins Henri le Sidaner, tour Les Jardins des Ifs with their yew topiary and creative local cuisine. Gerberoy’s chapel is also worth a visit. And just a few kilometres away lies Beauvais and its cathedral hosting daily light shows.