Greenhouses of the Château du Champ de Bataille

The Château du Champ de Bataille, at Sainte-Opportune-du-Bosc, was bought in 1992 by the decorator Jacques Garcia, who restored it and then re-created its gardens. According to the estate's official website, the storm of 1993 swept away what remained of the park and the storm of 1999 gave the creation a fresh impetus; Garcia worked first on his own and then, some fifteen years later, with Patrick Pottier. In the English version of the site, the greenhouses are listed among the lateral groves composed with the latter, alongside the Rams' Alley, the Squares of Diana and Apollo and the aviaries.

Normandie Tourisme says that two greenhouses of 400 m² were created by Jacques Garcia. Le Courrier de l'Eure, which visited them in February 2021, reports that the orchid collection was started by Garcia and by Patrick Pottier, the previous head gardener, who shared a passion for these plants. The head gardener then in post had been recruited two years earlier, and the magazine Mon Jardin & ma maison had just featured the greenhouses.

The garden is protected by an inscription as a historic monument (official website) and carries the Jardin remarquable label (Wikipedia). Normandie Tourisme lists the greenhouses among the finest to visit in Normandy (page updated on 21 August 2025).

According to French Wikipedia, the Squares of Diana and Apollo are framed by aviaries on the garden side and, on the outer side of the park, by orchid greenhouses. One of them, the Orangerie, serves as a Chinese salon, and a summer salon raised in a loggia stands at the centre of the group; neither room is open to visitors. Normandie Tourisme counts two greenhouses of 400 m², without saying whether the figure applies to each or to the total; the only greenhouse outline mapped on OpenStreetMap measures about 590 m² (a measurement taken on the map).

The account of the 2021 visit describes a sequence: the main orchid house, preceded by a corridor that separates it from a winter salon, then a salon planted with four chorisias, then a second house containing only two rows of tree ferns. The gardener keeps it at no less than 13 to 14 °C; shutters open and close to renew the air, and a misting system cools the atmosphere in summer.

The free photographs in the Commons category devoted to the greenhouses, taken in June 2023, show a roof of glass panes on slender bars, large glazed bays in a salon, a paved walkway with railings between tree ferns, and a narrow pool covered in water lettuce in the orchid house.

Orchids dominate: in 2021 the head gardener counted between 600 and 800 varieties, which made up 90 to 95 per cent of the plants grown in the greenhouses. They come from Asia, Latin America and other regions, with different needs for warmth, light and humidity, which makes for a constant juggling of pots. They share the setting with palms and tillandsias; Normandie Tourisme also mentions plants listed as "cornes d'élan" (staghorn ferns), epiphytes and tree ferns.

The gardener points to a Bulbophyllum echinolabium, whose red flower of 20 to 25 cm gives off a smell of rotting meat that attracts flies. Plants are placed according to their need for light and water rather than to a fixed scenography, and scale insects are treated locally with paraffin oil. In February, colourful blooms are few, which leaves the greenery in the foreground. Between the two houses, a salon shelters four chorisias, spiny-trunked trees of the southern hemisphere; the second house contains only two rows of tree ferns from Brazil.

The greenhouses border the outer side of the park of the Squares of Diana and Apollo, facing the aviaries. Normandie Tourisme places them within the gardens themselves, and the château's Facebook page invites people to visit the gardens "and more particularly the greenhouses". According to the 2021 report, written while the estate was closed, visitors generally stop at the entrance of the main house and look at the vegetation from above; they get closer to the plants only on the Journées du patrimoine (European Heritage Days).

Normandie Tourisme's selection also lists, in the Eure, the greenhouses of the Évreux botanical garden and the tropical greenhouse of Biotropica.