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 [...]

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Potager du Roi: from stinky pond to king’s kitchen

When Louis XIV decided in 1678 that he wanted a potager (kitchen garden) near his palace in Versailles, where he could bring visitors to admire the abundant produce, the site chosen was unpromising marshland, known as l’étang puant, or the stinking pond. Five years of work and perhaps a million francs later, the plot had [...]

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Le Festival des Jardins

Every summer, Chaumont-sur-Loire hosts a garden festival, and this year we have finally managed to visit. It takes place in the grounds of the splendid fairytale château at Chaumont, all chubby turreted towers and wooden drawbridges. The building rears up into view from time to time, a wonderfully enduring, medieval presence among the transient modern [...]

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Jardins, Jardin aux Tuileries

This weekend is the annual garden festival, Jardins, Jardin aux Tuileries, which takes place in a corner of Le Nôtre’s magnificent park in the middle of Paris. It is tiny compared to many British garden shows – I strolled round it today in about an hour – but the setting is charming under the shade [...]

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Dreams of Chelsea

Today is the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show and each year we become rather wistful, thinking about the wonderful show gardens, and indeed about our own little plot back in England. The French don’t really have an equivalent to Chelsea. But many chateaux run fine plant shows, like the well-known Journée des Plantes [...]

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