Springtime parks in Paris II

Here’s another off-the-beaten-track park to enjoy in this glorious spring sunshine. It’s almost the antithesis of yesterday’s recommendation, which was a small, naturalistic, nineteenth century park in the northwest of Paris. Today’s post is about parc de Sceaux, a vast, geometric, seventeenth century-style landscape, actually just outside the city’s southern perimeter. Laid out in the [...]

Read Full Post »

Springtime parks in Paris

Here’s a couple of slightly off-the-beaten-track places to enjoy Paris in the springtime. First, the Square des Batignolles, which was one of twenty-four gardens created in the mid-1800s as part of the modernisation of Paris by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. It is a park à l’anglaise (that is, laid out naturalistically) with undulating lawns [...]

Read Full Post »

More tell-tale signs

A recent post looked at the vagaries of park signage in Paris. Since then, I have been keeping an eye out for good examples. And last week, on a trip to the US, I found some. The City of Philadelphia has, in my opinion, got it right. So, what makes these signs work? It is [...]

Read Full Post »

Springtime in Paris

Next week I’m off to Philadelphia for a few days.  I’ll be speaking at a symposium at the UPenn School of Design, called Foreign Trends on American Soil. It promises to be a fascinating look at the many influences on landscape design in the US. My paper will compare Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris with [...]

Read Full Post »

Wall-to-wall green

Landscapelover is delighted to welcome fellow blogger Lula Alvarez (aka Camer@Work) from On Botanical Photography as a guest contributor for this post. We have both been visiting and photographing the green walls—or vertical gardens—of master botanist Patrick Blanc. Vertical gardens are everywhere these days. Seen as a dramatic statement of green credentials, they are trumpeted [...]

Read Full Post »

Curiouser and curiouser

If you’re interested in exploring hidden treasures, curiosities, and esoterica, you may want to join in the second international “Obscura Day.” On April 9th, a host of tours and events are being organised around the world to encourage us to poke around in fascinating by-ways and neglected corners. Here in the French capital, I am [...]

Read Full Post »

Happy St David’s Day

March 1st is the feast day of St David, the patron saint of Wales, my homeland. Paris does not have many red dragons (the country’s heraldic emblem) or even, at this time of year, many leeks (the traditional emblem of Wales). But earlier today I saw this sunny little patch of Narcissus ‘February Gold’ by [...]

Read Full Post »