This is the French estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte (right-click to embiggen in another tab):
While impressive, the picture doesn’t do it justice: past the top of the pic is a series of man-made waterfalls which sends something like half a million gallons of water a day down the hill, where it ends up in the ponds and eventually in the moat which surrounds the main house. The water is then filtered and pumped back up to the reservoir at the top of the hill, to start its trip back down all over again*.
Anyway, I showed this pic to a friend, who said, “Wow, I’d hate to have to do all the gardening there!”
To which I made the age-old response: “Nah… give me a dozen Mexicans and I’d do it myself.”
I did warn you in the title…
*If you want to know how it all works, Monty Don explains it in his Netflix show, French Gardens.
Monty Don has 2 series on NetFlix, French Gardens and Italian Gardens.
He is a clever Brit, obviously in love with his subject and learned in it, and his shows are hugely addictive.
But you obviously knew that.
Addictive to the point where wife and I are off to a Northern Italian Garden tour come October. A self directed tour – I shall stumble and bumble from Garden to Garden over-refreshed by repeated injections of Italian Rosso.