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 [...]

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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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Renovation of Parc André Citroën

Parc André Citroën in the 15th arrondissement is one of my favourite Paris parks. Opened in 1992, it was designed by landscape architects Gilles Clément and Alain Provost, with architects Patrick Berger, Jean-Paul Viguier and Jean-François Jodry, members of the two winning teams from a Europe-wide competition to find the best park design for this [...]

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Nuit Blanche

Tomorrow, October 2nd, is Nuit Blanche in Paris, a city-wide contemporary arts festival that takes place over the course of a single night. Installations, performances and videos will spring up around the city, often outdoors, from Saturday evening, and all will be gone by early Sunday morning. Organised by the mayor’s office, the entire event [...]

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Jardin Atlantique

The City of Paris has just completed a customer satisfaction survey, which showed that 98% of visitors to the city’s parks were happy with their experience. The top reason given was ease of access. Ironically, I read these results on a noticeboard in the Jardin Atlantique, which must be the hardest park in the city [...]

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Trouble at the Tuileries

I have just written an article for Gardens and People on the extraordinary 1990 proposals by Bernard Lassus to reinvent the Jardin des Tuileries. They were an entry in a state-run competition and, sadly, a less adventurous plan by Louis Benech and Pascal Cribier was chosen for implementation. My article is part of a series [...]

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The Emperor’s own park

The Bois de Boulogne, once an ancient oak forest, was for centuries a royal hunting ground. In the 1850s, it became the first of many public parks created by the Emperor Napoleon III. His team of engineers, designers and horticulturalists produced what they saw as an English-style landscape, with sinuous paths, rock features, clumps of [...]

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Dan Kiley at La Défense

This week I went to see Dan Kiley‘s landcape design at La Défense, the business district to the west of Paris. Kiley is one of my favourite landscape architects. I spent a morning with him in his Vermont home not long before he died, to learn more about his work at the Lincoln Center in [...]

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Père Lachaise: where the French ‘made the grave a garden’

Today, the cemetery in the 20th arrondissement of Paris is best known as the final resting place for such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison. But it is an iconic place for another reason, as I am discovering in my research for a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania next Spring. Père [...]

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Promenade Pereire

Created in 1989, this linear park runs along the middle of boulevard Pereire in the 17th arrondissement. It may not be on a par with the great parks of Paris, or merit a special visit, but it is green and pretty, and beautifully maintained by the city. This shrubby bed (right) is typical of the [...]

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