The park surrounding the château is a layered landscape three centuries in the making. The core is Le Nôtre's formal French garden, designed in the 1660s and 1670s: grand axes, sculpted terraces, a Grand Canal that channels the Nonette river into a long reflecting sheet, and the round Bassin de la Gerbe. Le Nôtre also rerouted the entrance approach and created the broad perspective that frames the château from the main gate.
Later additions include an English garden with winding paths and a more romantic character, and the Hamlet — a cluster of thatched-roof cottages around a small lake built in the 1770s by Louis Joseph de Bourbon as a rustic retreat. Marie Antoinette visited and was so taken with the idea that she commissioned her own Hameau at Versailles a few years later.
The Maison de Sylvie, a small pavilion tucked into the woodland beside the water, was decorated by Henri II de Montmorency for his wife Marie Félice des Ursins and became a gathering point for writers and poets in the 17th century. The park is large enough — and quiet enough away from the main paths — to make for a genuinely peaceful afternoon.