To mark William Christie's 80th birthday, Éditions VMF and the famous conductor decided to collaborate on a book celebrating his gardens, now listed as historic monuments.

Where do the most beautiful enchantments take place? In a garden, of course. A garden quivering with leaves and birds, where the fairies have not deserted the gentle shade of the trees, where music is like the air we breathe, where we never stop reinventing happiness as the seasons and blooms change, between the fantasy of topiary and the geometry of bower, the murmur of water and the notes of summer night, the memory of stones and the tangle of branches, the promise of fruit and the fragility of roses in the heat of the day. A garden whose enchanter, William Christie, is at once musician, aesthete and gardener. And what a musician! And what a gardener!

It's in Thiré in the Vendée, on the borders of the Bocage and the Plaine, in a peaceful corner of the countryside where the paths and woods have retained some of their old mysteries and the charm of the old provinces, that we have seen, around a noble dwelling from the end of the 16th century, this garden like no other, patiently blossoming, growing and embellishing, year after year, composed in the free flow of inspiration, like an enchanted score of the most exquisite harmony and extreme refinement.