Growing a Beautiful Life, One French Castle Garden at a Time
Meet Jen, the Chateau Gardener. She left a marriage that was erasing her for the cocoon of a Normandy coliving, and has grown into head gardener at a 12th-century French abbey.
When someone’s life looks enviable from the outside, we tend to call it luck. Right place, right time. As if they happened to be standing there when the door opened.
In reality, the door opens for those who knock.
Readers, I’d like you to meet my friend, Jen. She’s a gardener living in a 12th-century abbey in the south of France. I met her at Chateau Coliving last year and had the good fortune to spend three months as one of her housemates.
Hers is the kind of life that, if you just met her today, seems like a fairy tale; as though she were plucked out of an ordinary life and plunked down in this fabulous place.
That’s not how it went. Jen had to make a series of really difficult decisions, then keep moving through all of the uncertainty, stress, and self-doubt that comes with uprooting your life. What grew out of that is pretty remarkable.
The timing looks like fate, but I hope you recognize the intention and deliberate positioning she did that got her where she is now.
That’s the part worth paying attention to, because it’s available to the rest of us, too. You can’t arrange to be “lucky.” But you can decide your life is going to look very different from now on and start taking steps in that direction — even if you don’t quite know where it’s all headed.
Here’s how it went for Jen, in her own words.
How would you describe your current lifestyle in one sentence?
I’m a Chateau gardener living in the south of France.
How long have you been living this way, and are you doing it solo, with a partner, with kids?
I officially moved to Normandy, France in September 2025, then to Camon in the south of France in May 2026. I am completely on my own.
What did you do before?
I’ve been gardening since my teens, working for my dad’s landscaping company. It has been a lifelong passion.
But in my 20s, I was an art dealer in New Orleans, in my 30s a research analyst in Miami and NYC, and at 40 I got married and moved to the Netherlands. I taught English and International Business Communication there for 16 years.
After COVID hit, I experienced a series of personal setbacks. Going through menopause and work stress were compounded by my father’s death. I was 4,000 miles away as he lay dying in isolation, and said goodbye to him over FaceTime.
We flew home for his funeral, and when we flew back to Amsterdam, my husband and I both got COVID; he had a massive heart attack five days later. Without an emotional support system in place, I spiraled into a very deep depression.
After some soul searching, I decided to go back into gardening professionally. I’d had a fantastic garden at my house in the historic center of Utrecht. It was on the Utrecht city garden tour. That work gave me my life back.
There was a lot going on in your life when you started seriously considering this kind of change?
My 16-year marriage collapsed. I had always felt like a fish out of water in the Netherlands. The Dutch tend to value bluntness over empathy, and I could never quite get on board with that.
My ex said a few things that made me realize I had to make some seriously big choices. He told me I didn’t enrich his life. It was the most painful thing anyone had ever said to me.
I’d created a beautiful home filled with art, books, cats, and a garden I adored, but it wasn’t enough to sustain a relationship where both people had different priorities.
So I decided to put out feelers in France for chateaux that might be looking for a resident gardener. I decided to leave my relationship on a Friday in late March 2025. That following Monday, I got a call from Château de L’Isle Marie in Normandy, asking me to garden and come check out their chateau coliving program starting that April.
It truly was a life raft thrown in my direction.
What do you do for work now?
I stayed at Katia Dimova’s Chateau Coliving in Normandy for a year, working the grounds, 200 acres of nature preserve, reshaping and restoring the garden spaces, cutting back ivy, brambles, and weeds.
The community Katia built there, with Jeanne and Kevin the community managers, changed my life. I was meeting new people every month: digital nomads, writers there for the Writer’s Haven, and I now have friends spread across the world.
There were family dinners, excursions, mastermind workshops, and games like “Murder in the Castle” (my favorite). Katia made room for both — space to isolate in my apartment when I needed it, or join in when I didn’t.
When she told me the Chateau was being sold, I started reaching out to others in France and found one in the south. I moved to Camon at the end of May 2026, and now live and work in a 12th-century abbey chateau.
Getting to work in these magnificent gardens each day has me completely blissed out.
How did you fund this transition, and what does life cost now compared to before?
Savings, plus the proceeds from selling my house in Utrecht. Since I live at the chateau, they pay me a salary plus room and board, so my overhead is very low now.
The move itself hasn’t been easy. The French bureaucracy, especially health insurance and taxes, has been a slow, painful process.
Walk me through the most boring practical thing you had to figure out.
I brought only a few suitcases and my gardening tools; everything else went into storage in Utrecht. It felt like I was detonating my life for the great unknown.
Working 200 acres of nature preserve in Normandy gave me the space to process that. I cried and screamed at a lot of trees. I got the space to sit with what had happened and figure out what I actually wanted.
It was extremely painful, but being part of the coliving community was like living inside a healing cocoon. The friends I made there I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
What’s something about your life now that would have sounded ridiculous five years ago?
I literally live in a French castle and maintain its gardens. I’m surrounded by history and beauty every day.
What did you give up that you actually miss? And what don’t you miss at all?
I miss the home and garden I created, my two cats, and the amazing Dutch city I lived in, with its lovely neighbors.
I don’t miss the marriage as it was slowly erasing me. I’d started to feel like a secondary character in someone else’s film. Now I’m the star of it.
What’s something you packed that turned out ridiculous — or something you didn’t pack that you’d never travel without now?
I packed every herb and spice from my Utrecht kitchen, which France obviously also has. I don’t know why, but having them still gives me comfort.
What I didn’t pack, and quickly learned I needed: linen dresses. Essential in the south of France.
What would you say to the version of yourself still working out whether this life was possible?
I think, deep down, I already knew I could live this way. But the terror of leaving a home and garden I’d created and adored, and my cats, nearly destroyed me emotionally.
I’m slowly coming into my own, and making peace with the mistakes of the past.
Keep up with the Chateau Gardener
You can follow Jen’s adventures — and simply enjoy her take on art, garden design, and historic properties — on Instagram, where she’s (rightly) known as @chateau_gardener.
Midlife Nomads is where people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s figure out how to build freer, more flexible lives — one decision at a time. Subscribe to follow along, and reply anytime with your interview and story ideas.
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Thanks for sharing more about Jen's story! Great read!
Loved reading more about Jen's journey. Terrific interview.