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The Pays de Bourges, a territory of more than 1,500 km2 in the heart of the Cher department, offers a great diversity of landscape, the result of the combination of topographical, hydrographic and agricultural variations.
Champagne Berrichonne, land of great cereal crops, dominates the landscape of the Country, it is no less rich of the presence of strong landscape entities.
In the North, the forests of Allogny, Saint-Palais and Menetou-Salon, located at the edge of the Sologne, are adjacent
landscapes of orchards and vineyardsThe Verger Forestin covers small hills at the foot of which flow streams that feed many ponds, arranged to irrigate orchards. The polyculture area, a transition between Champagne Berrichonne and the units of forests and orchards, offers a mixed landscape, structured by a variety of plant forms such as hedges, groves, isolated trees and alignments. The mosaic of the small plots of the vineyard of Menetou-Salon give the image of a gardened landscape.
Two sites offer undeniable points of view: the North of the Country is in a balcony position above the cereal limestone plateau shaped by the Yèvre, Auron, Cher and Arnon, poles of architectural, industrial and ecological interest; the cuesta, geological rupture located in the East of the Country between the Champagne Berrichonne and the valley of Germigny, bocage landscape.
Other sites of quality, if not remarkable, punctuate the territory of the Pays de Bourges: the Canal de Berry, built in 1841 to join the coal basin of Commentry and the upper Loire, offers a diversity of atmospheres throughout its course from the North-West to the South-East of the territory; the Marais de la Voiselle, in Bourges, site under classification, is remarkable for its richness as a wetland, its extent and its privileged position within an urban area; rising on a promontory in the center of the Country, the cathedral of Bourges, visible in many points, is a symbolic and identity element of the territory.
The Pays de Bourges has many sites of faunistic and floral interest, such as the forest of Allogny and scattered woodlands, the calcicultural lawns, the shooting range polygon, the European sites of bats of the quarries of Bourges and Trouy, as well as the valleys, notably the Yèvre, downstream of Bourges, classified as an Important Protection Zone for the Conservation of Birds (Z.I.C.O.); the valley and the slopes of the Cher in Lunery, classified Areas of Ecological, Wildlife and Floristic Interest (Z.N.I.E.F.F.); the Ile du Val d'Auron and its surroundings, in Bourges, sites under a prefectural order of conservation of the biotope.
The variety and richness of the landscapes of the territory of the Pays de Bourges offer the possibility to move, in a very short distance, from an open landscape of great crops to a closed landscape of forests, then from an area of hills covered with orchards to a wetland of valley bottoms ..., from one atmosphere to another, from one world to another.
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