Gerberoy (Oise): Village with 1000 rose bushes & Remarkable Gardens at 2h from Paris

We end our mini road trip around Rouen by Gerberoy, another village classified “Most beautiful villages of France”. This village is only 2 hours away from Paris, but as we didn’t have a car when we were still parisian, we never tried to come here. What a pity!

Part 1: Travel Diary
Part 2: Practical Tips

Part 1: Travel Diary

Gerberoy was not always the peaceful village as we know it today. The village was located on a hillock on the border between the ancient kingdoms of France and England and witnessed several conflicts. Thanks to the painter Henri le Sidaner, the village has regained its splendor. Gerberoy is for the Sidaner what Giverny represents for Monet. It was Rodin who suggested to the painter to settle here. First, he painted the village. Then, after having created magnificent gardens in the Italian style, on the ruins of a castle, he encouraged all the inhabitants to plant flowers in front of their house. He even created in 1928 a rose festival for the village. Since then, Gerberoy has become “the village of 1000 roses”. The next festival will take place on Sunday, September 13, 2020, be there.

The streets of the village are very small. Cars can be avoided with great difficulty. Thus, it is forbidden to park within the village, but there are two parking lots, free of charge, at the entrances of the village. We chose to park at the parking lot not far from the town hall. The advantage: there are public toilets just next door ahaha. They are the only ones that we spotted in this village lol. Everything is still closed, we visit this village surely crowded in summer, with only a handful of tourists. It is super pleasant!

The town hall must surely also take care of the maintenance of the thousands of old roses because we saw the town hall gardeners at work all day long. The roses are all in bloom, it smells divinely good. The wind is charged with this sweet scent of roses, which is no longer found in the shops, but only in the garden of a passionate person.

The roses are very varied, I don’t know the name of each type of rose, but I took pictures of dozens of roses, to use as models for my paper flowers. They are, for the most part, huge, and certainly not suitable for sale as cut flowers because the stems are very thin and 3-4 roses share the same stem.

The restaurant Le Vieux LogisThe medieval barbecue, listed in the old Michelin guides, looks very strong. If we hadn’t had lunch earlier, we would surely have been tempted.

It is while going up towards the church that one has a very beautiful sight on all the small village.

Unfortunately, the gardens of which the village is so proud were not open to the public at the time of our visit, but for sure, we will come back to visit :

• Henri Le Sidaner Gardens entrance 6€
• Le jardin des ifs: Open from June 10 to September 30, from 11am to 12pm and from 2:30pm to 6pm. Admission: 5€. This ancient garden is completed by a vegetable garden in semi-permaculture where one cultivates on raised mounds called “lasagne”. A third part is dedicated to the “flower garden” with more than fifty varieties of ancient, modern and botanical roses.

This village is our favorite among the villages we have visited in France so far.
The following weekend, we went to visit some cities of character

Part 2: Practical Tips

• This village is one of the +800 tourist places in France that we recommend. To access the Google Maps map of the 800 places in question, click here
• Car rental: we compared the offers and that day, the cheapest was 24€/day with Enterprise. To compare the rental offers, you can look on Lastminute(link)
• There is no hotel in Gerberoy itself, but you will find a chambre d’hôte with spa (and table d’hôte if needed) 6km away(link Booking)