Visit of the gardens of the Saint Pierre Priory in Réaumur

At no. 2 rue du Prieuré, walk through the gate and discover an exceptional place with its architectural heritage, its shaded alleys, its ornamental garden and its new orchard.
Listen to the musical harmony of nature, the singing of the birds, the rustling of the wind in the foliage, the stridulation of the insects, the sound of the water that descends by a ru of the pond towards the Grand Lay, which flows into the river and which lapps in the washhouse.

Circuit of the 3 terraces

The portal crossed, different buildings stand and arouse curiosity. You can discover the facades of the priory house rebuilt in the early nineteenth century and the remains of the old chapel of the fourteenth century. The date 1695 chiseled above a semicircular door (probably old entrance of the refectory), questions us about the flight of time. Along the facade of the house, you admire the entrance to the gardens marked by a graceful portal with pillars of blond stone, surmounted by enigmatic polyhedra.
After crossing the first terrace of the vegetable garden, you will stroll in a real cloister of greenery shaped by the monks in the seventeenth century and surrounded by yews centenaries. This space that encourages mediation, called in old dialect «affiage», is an atypical structure in the history of gardens.
It was a place of grafting fruit trees, which is why the new owners, have recreated in this set a conservatory orchard of apple and pear trees with old local species (apple trees: the Reinette Clochard, the Racine blanche, the Bonvin, the Pineau de Villeneuve: pear trees: the Royale de Vendée, the Poire d'Aigue).

Discovery tour of the bocage

During your visit, you can, properly paved, make a detour through the 2 ponds that are natural reservoirs of fauna and flora typical of wetlands and bocage.
After the sharpening, you cross the natural meadow along the tennis and a hedgerow bocagère. Observe the bocage mesh, ditches and embankments and the importance of their continuity. Pass between the 2 ponds where you can see the willows that fix the banks, listen to the water that flows in the weirs.
Take advantage of this high point to enjoy an exceptional view of the Haut Bocage, its various hedges, its tadpoles oaks in free port, its shrub layer…
From there you go down to the Grand Lay, which borders the property, imagining on your left, along the wood the old watercress fed by a spring, which also serves a little further the small wash house restored fifteen years ago.
After walking along our "river", for 200 meters, you go up on your left by a path, partially equipped with wooden steps, towards the Priory where you will be offered drinks and snacks. Are you an observer? In several places you will notice nesting boxes, arranged in height, with the collaboration of the LPO, which offer shelters to different species of birds. Several panels are also there to remind you that in Réaumur you are on the lands of the encyclopaedist René-Antoine Ferchaud de Réaumur who, we like to imagine, also wandered in this area and these gardens when he came to visit the monks of the Priory, or hunting for insects. Note, in the successive spaces of this garden, the strong link between the river and the landscape of the Haut Bocage with a graduation of the progressive maintenance. The quality of this garden, its unique character and its authenticity, allow the Priory Saint Pierre to be the only park in Vendée to benefit from the protection under the Historic Monuments.