Parc de La Villette

Today it is fashionable to grapple with the idea of collective meaning and memory in landscapes. Conferences are held, books written, different styles of garden analysed, all debating how far deliberate messages and associations can be conveyed through designed landscapes. My favourite article on the topic is Marc Treib’s wry “Must Landscapes Mean?” which examines [...]

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Gladsome gardens

Today we have seen the first snow of the season in central Paris. Parc Monceau has an icing sugar dusting of white on its grass and still-autumnal trees. Usually the City closes the parks in storms and snow, for safety reasons, but this is light enough to allow us still to wander and enjoy.

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A nursery for Le Nôtre

In the 8th arrondissement is a street called rue de la Pépinière, literally the street of the plant nursery. Today it is a busy commercial thoroughfare, with a dedicated Hello Kitty store and a big Starbucks. But that name suggests its previous history. For centuries this area to the northeast of Paris was open land [...]

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‘Stone surrounded by a dreadful thought’

The title of this post is poet Charles Baudelaire’s description of a graveyard. His own tombstone can be found in the cemetery in Montparnasse.  Opened in 1824, Montparnasse was one of three rural burial grounds created for Paris after the closure of the capital’s squalid urban cemeteries, where unmarked, unmourned bodies had lain thirty deep. [...]

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Jardin du Palais Royal – the only remarkable garden in Paris?

Around 350 French landscapes are currently labelled as remarkable, under a scheme run by the ministry of culture. The idea is to encourage conservation and to increase accessibility to the best landscapes in the country. Valid for five years, the jardin remarquable designation is awarded to well-maintained gardens that offer exemplary design and botanical or [...]

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Autumn at Monceau

“I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.” (Adeline Knapp) It was mild and wet in Paris this weekend, with the sort of steady drizzle that encourages you to [...]

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A definition of mellow

Recently my seven-year-old daughter asked me what “mellow” meant. I rather struggled to define it. I could have just shown her an English autumn day. For me, it expresses exactly that “ pleasantly soft, sweet, ripe” sense given by my dictionary. Rather than moving on to quote the much-abused line from Keats, I will simply [...]

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