Sex and death in the garden

Fashion dictates that gardens should offer year round interest. In particular, winter needs to be forced to play its part with evergreen shrubs, coloured bark, late-flowering perennials, quirkily-shaped stems, early bulbs. All must be colourful and bright and perky. But increasingly I am inclined towards gardens that reflect the reality of nature, in its disorder, [...]

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Climate change à la Parisienne

Most people think about climate change with either skepticism or despair. In a new campaign, the mairie de Paris is trying to introduce a third response: optimism. A group of architects, collectif et alors, has imagined how Paris would respond to a rise in temperatures of 2 degrees. The results, presented as twenty postcards, show [...]

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Autumn – the year’s last, loveliest smile

We have enjoyed a glorious Indian summer in Paris, lingering well into October, with temperatures in the 20s and bright sunny skies almost every morning. But the trees know. Shorter days and cooler nights have signalled the changing seasons to them. Here is one beautiful example from last weekend, in our local parc Monceau. I [...]

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