Lyon's fountain at Place des Jacobins is dressed in frothy blooms. Photo / Sophie Chapgier
Lyon's fountain at Place des Jacobins is dressed in frothy blooms. Photo / Sophie Chapgier
Beauty included in a garden’s design repays us in pleasure gained
When we talk about the French urban garden it conjures images of a courtyard with cafe-style iron table and chairs to sit at for a coffee in the sun.
Maybe there's a planter with pelargoniums or lavender, a minimally clipped hedge, topiary and pale limestone paving. Simple and chic.
But there is also great depth and breadth to French garden design history.
I visited France with my family when I was 17 and remember being awestruck by the urban design of Paris, clearly a master plan at work. From the Eiffel Tower we got a beautiful view of the Seine River carving a silver ribbon through the geometric, grand, tree-lined avenues of the city centre.
This strident streetscape was developed by Georges-Eugene Haussmann under Emperor Napoleon III (nephew to Napoleon Bonaparte) in the mid to late-1800s. Much of old Paris was demolished: the city had experienced outbreaks of cholera because of poor sanitation and cramped living conditions.
The work was controversial, displacing many of the city's inhabitants, but capital works, including extensive improvements to underground sewerage tunnels, were achieved.
Napoleon's brief to Baron Haussmann was to "give [Paris] air and open space, to connect and unify the different parts of the city into one whole and to make it more beautiful".
Inspired by Hyde Park and London's town squares, Napoleon III oversaw the planting of 600,000 trees and the formation of 2000ha of green space and parks in 17 years.
In Haussmann's words, Napoleon gave instruction to provide places for "relaxation and amusement for all families and all children whether rich or poor". These green spaces became an instant hit with Parisians.
Head 23km southwest of Paris and step back another 200 years. The grounds of the Palace of Versailles make another statement about grandeur and the control of nature. The grounds offer a sense of expansiveness, celebrating the art of perspective in landscape design.
The avenue and Grand Canal, which extends beyond a water parterre to the outermost boundary of the grounds, was created by landscape architect Andre Le Notre.
Under Louis XIV, Le Notre was commissioned in 1661 to design the gardens, which, with other designers, took 40 years to complete.
In the 2014 film A Little Chaos, Kate Winslet stars as a garden designer who beats the male competition to design a water garden in Versailles. Although not historically accurate, the film is food for thought on the challenges of constructing a grand garden without the convenience of modern machinery.
If you've never been to Versailles, fear not, you can look it up on Google streetview and take a virtual wander through the palace and gardens at your leisure.
This year, British-Indian guest sculptor Anish Kapoor has made a contemporary, and controversial, statement of his own in the garden, drawing the "very controlled landscape" of Versailles into "instability", in the words of the Palace's president, Catherine Pegard.
Over the past 10 years we've welcomed many interns to our New Lynn environment centre, some of them from Europe, including three from different regions in France.
Kids brighten garden frames. Photo / Sophie Chapgier
Sophie Chapgier, whose home is in Lyon, was our most recent French intern. I asked her what you'd find in a typical French home garden and if there are any particular trends in the French gardening scene.
She said for her region at least, most gardens have a rose.
Lyon is hosting the World Festival of Roses and Sophie sent photos of the city centre filled with roses, of raised gardens at Place des Terreaux and the statue and fountain at Place des Jacobins draped in thousands of the flowers in shades of pink.
Since returning to France late last year, Sophie has found work as an activity leader at a retirement village. With the help of an organisation called La Legumerie, they built boxed edible gardens, which local preschoolers painted with colourful illustrations.
She says, "We have organised many meetings to follow all the steps of gardening: seeding, transplanting, planting, gathering and cooking."
The trend is for hospitals, retirement homes and schools to develop wellness and therapeutic gardens. There is a swing towards community gardens, urban greening and organics in France.
The French Government has adopted the Labbe Law to ban pesticides in parks by 2017, to halve their use in agriculture by 2025, and to prohibit their use by individuals from 2022. Sophie says, "Organic gardening is very trendy.
