A Burlesque Marxist in Paris

The Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx was a modern day Renaissance man – painter, jeweller, poet, musician, sculptor, environmentalist, cook, set designer, plant hunter, landscape architect. Of course, it is those last two activities which draw me to him. He was one of the finest modernist landscape designers, known for the scale and bravura of his [...]

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La Folie Titon

Here’s a better example of sustainability in the parks of Paris. I wrote the other day about the park department’s rather ham-fisted attempts to introduce biodiversity in the grand parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement. Today I saw a much better version. It was in le jardin de la Folie Titon, a neighbourhood park in [...]

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Landscape Lover turns one…

It was a year ago that this blog saw the light of day, so I am allowing myself a little self-indulgent contemplation of its first twelve months. As a parent, I believe that every stranger encountered on the internet is a potential axe murderer. Yet one of the great joys for me in this year [...]

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Nature under totalitarian rule

Paris is gaining something of a ‘green’ reputation – with its Vélib’ bike-rental scheme, its organic markets, and a profusion of pocket parks and vertical gardens. For the City parks department, one of the trickiest issues in this move to a more sustainable Paris is the management of the grass in the capital’s public parks. [...]

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Signs of the times

I have become quietly obsessed with park signage and historical markers. Already I’ve posted a couple of times on particular examples in Paris and Philadelphia, and now people are starting to feed my addiction by sending me images of other interesting specimens. It’s perhaps a bit of a specialist topic for the general visitor to [...]

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Vaux le Vicomte

On Saturday I led a guided tour of the fabulous estate at Vaux le Vicomte, southeast of Paris, which was the first commission for André Le Nôtre. These are possibly my favourite gardens in France. What I tried to convey to the visitors was the extraordinary drama and theatre of the design, with its vast, [...]

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A ha’peth of tar

La Banque Postale has just opened its new headquarters in a cluster of buildings in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Having taken many years and a great deal of public money to complete, the building project has been the cause of much controversy and debate. But to me the architecture is splendid. At its heart [...]

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A modernist fortress

Today I am delighted to be a guest contributor on Lula Alvarez’s blog, On Botanical Photography. We have jointly produced a photo-essay on on the Barbican in London, Lula taking the wonderful photographs of this modernist fortress, with me supplying the accompanying text. For both of us, the Barbican is one of the most fascinating [...]

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RHS gardens, Wisley

Some people are rather sniffy about the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens at Wisley in Surrey: the entry fee and cafés are too expensive, the visitors are all middle-aged and middle class, the displays are too horticultural, the history of the site is not celebrated, the car park is impossible to navigate for the disabled. All [...]

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