Catherine Deneuve’s former château near Paris is now an elegant hotel
The many famous men linked to the veteran actress Catherine Deneuve, on screen and off, could dominate this column. Yet the Gallic superstar’s most enduring entanglement was arguably with her gardener Gérard Germaine, the slight, bucket-hatted outdoorsman charged with maintaining Primard, her lush Eure river estate an hour west of Paris near the village of Guainville.
For Deneuve’s last decade as chatelaine of the 17th-century château, Germaine tended the roses, cleared the wooded paths and pruned the cherry orchard designed by the Belgian landscape “starchitect” Jacques Wirtz — as well as providing green-fingered wisdom and (platonic) love. So taken was she by the dedication of Germaine and his labourers, when she became the first woman to win the prestigious Lumière film award nearly a decade ago she dedicated the prize to “the farmers of France”.
By that time Deneuve had already put Primard on the market to move further into the countryside of her beloved farmers. But Germaine stayed on as head gardener for the new owner, Fontenille, a hotelier with a portfolio of 11 properties with heritage character, the most breathlessly praised being the seaside Bords de Mer in Marseilles. His brief now is to establish formality and symmetry, to frame the main house as the star of the show. Deneuve’s Primard, he says, was more of a jardin sauvage — wilder, more romantic, “more English”.
Channelling Germaine’s passion for the Eure river landscape, Fontenille’s owners Guillaume Foucher and Frédéric Biousse have coaxed the property into the platonic ideal of a destination hotel. It’s a place for Parisians who want to escape but remain well within the orbit of beau-monde Paris, a rustic retreat where you can still pack your gladrags.