Boxwood and Birch, Parc André Citroën, Paris, France. 

This is one of the public garden projects that Gilles Clément was involved in (along with landscape designer Alain Provost and architects Patrick Berger, Jean-Francois Jodry and Jean-Paul Viguier). The wedge-shaped parterre, developed in the 1990’s, is filled with block-shaped boxwoods deliberately clipped at irregular heights. 

Clément’s Royal Gardens of Blois, here.

Groundbreaker: Gilles Clément Clément, an international Renaissance Man when it comes to the concepts of “design” and “gardening” and “ecology.” He developed the conceptual design tools of the Moving Garden, the Planetary Garden, and his more recent concept, Landscapes of the Third Kind. Clément has degrees in both landscape design and agronomy, and has worked on numerous public gardens including Parc André-Citroën, the Henri Matisse Park in Lille, and the Valloires Abbey gardens ~ but refers to himself as a “gardener.” In 1999, the French national prize for landscape architecture was bestowed upon him without his permission. He insisted that the real architects of the landscape are actually the farmers and foresters. Pictured: The Royal Gardens of Blois PHOTO BY: Georges Lévêque  Boxwood and Birch Garden, Parc André Citroën, Paris, France, here.

Groundbreaker: Gilles Clément

Clément, an international Renaissance Man when it comes to the concepts of “design” and “gardening” and “ecology.” He developed the conceptual design tools of the Moving Garden, the Planetary Garden, and his more recent concept, Landscapes of the Third Kind. Clément has degrees in both landscape design and agronomy, and has worked on numerous public gardens including Parc André-Citroën, the Henri Matisse Park in Lille, and the Valloires Abbey gardens ~ but refers to himself as a “gardener.” In 1999, the French national prize for landscape architecture was bestowed upon him without his permission. He insisted that the real architects of the landscape are actually the farmers and foresters.

Pictured: The Royal Gardens of Blois 
PHOTO BY: Georges Lévêque 

Boxwood and Birch Garden, Parc André Citroën, Paris, France, here.

Chateau de la Chatonniere, France. The Garden of Abundance (established in 2000) is a leaf-shaped potager consisting of ornamental cabbage, onions, eggplant, tomatoes, celery and an assortment of herbs. It is just one of twelve different garden “scenes” at the Chateau. The other gardens include the Garden of Silence (a contemplative garden), Garden of Romance (with a Viking labyrinth design), Botanic Sciences Garden (for medicinal studies), Vale of Elegance (French Renaissance style), and the Gardens of Dance (with over 40,000 blooming daffodils in May), to name but a few. 

The castle (built centuries ago along the road taken by Joan of Arc during the Middle Ages) was a four-towered fortress with enclosed village, stables, church, and underground cellars. It was not until after the Hundred Years War that it was transformed into a country manor home by Mrs. Vacher de La Chaise, and to this day remains a privately held property. The current owner, Mme. Beatrice de Andia, began the garden transformations in 1990 with the assistance of a Head Gardener. The gardens, but not the home, are open to visitors. 

Painted during van Gogh’s stay with the la famille Roulin in Arles, France. “… I have made portraits of a whole family, that of the postman whose head I had done previously—the man, his wife, the baby, the little boy, and the son of sixteen, all characters and very French, though the first has the look of a Russian.” (Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, c. December 4, 1888)Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum.  necspenecmetu: Vincent Willem van Gogh, The Postman Roulin, 1889

Painted during van Gogh’s stay with the la famille Roulin in Arles, France. 
“… I have made portraits of a whole family, that of the postman whose head I had done previously—the man, his wife, the baby, the little boy, and the son of sixteen, all characters and very French, though the first has the look of a Russian.” (Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, c. December 4, 1888)

Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum. 

necspenecmetu:

Vincent Willem van Gogh, The Postman Roulin, 1889

(via windwrinkle)

I would like this for my yard.  Deemed “architecture in motion,” this electromechanical pachyderm is a moving steel cathedral, constructed from recycled materials and American Tulipwood. Made in France, the elephant is one of the Machines of the Isle of Nantes (Les Machines de l’île), an artistic and cultural project created in the warehouses of the former shipyards in Nantes, France. The elephant is 12 meters high, 8 meters wide and can carry 49 passengers at a rate of one-third kilometer per mile…along the banks of the Loire River. It was the intention of the artists, (François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice) to conceptualize travel through time “at the crossroads of the imaginary worlds of Jules Verne and the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci.” 

I would like this for my yard. 

Deemed “architecture in motion,” this electromechanical pachyderm is a moving steel cathedral, constructed from recycled materials and American Tulipwood.

Made in France, the elephant is one of the Machines of the Isle of Nantes (Les Machines de l’île), an artistic and cultural project created in the warehouses of the former shipyards in Nantes, France. The elephant is 12 meters high, 8 meters wide and can carry 49 passengers at a rate of one-third kilometer per mile…along the banks of the Loire River. It was the intention of the artists, (François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice) to conceptualize travel through time “at the crossroads of the imaginary worlds of Jules Verne and the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci.”