The Haunted Garden by HoiYan.
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.
Facsimilie of the Funeral Ritual in the Garden of Minnakht
Original image from Dynasty 18/the New Kingdom
This facsimile painting copies a scene in the tomb of Minnakht (TT 87) in western Thebes. The scene depicts a garden with a large pool. The facsimile was painted at the tomb in 1921 by Charles K. Wilkinson.
(Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
(via bible-garden)
Strict weeping Alaskan cedars at The Oregon Garden. The eighty-acre garden includes a Conifer Garden (above), a Sensory Garden, Market Garden, and several others.
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.
The Accidental Gardener: The Golden Age of Topiary
Dear Garden Devotees,
As a self-proclaimed, certifiable, historical garden connoisseur, I was fascinated to learn what actually led to the decline of the Roman Empire (which is something that’s been keeping me up at night). It appears that it was the fault of the topiary, brought about by ancient gardeners who sallied forth with shears and scissors in search of the closest yew.
Topiary is the pruning and training of live plants into shapes. It comes from the Latin term “topiarius” which translates into “pertaining to ornamental gardening.”
The Romans, who were fine architects and builders, transferred their architectural skills into the garden by means of the topiary, only with more fantastical implementation. It was a Roman by the name of Cnaeus Matius who introduced Julius Caesar to his fanciful courtyard pruning habits, thereby becoming a court favorite among the sovereigns. Matius set to work, propagating his favorite method of gardening on a galactic scale. Politics being what they were, it wasn’t long before Rome, Mistress of the World, was awash in meticulously clipped hedges, animal-shaped shrubs, spiral trees, tonsil evergreens, geometrical forms, obelisks, and serpentine columns. (The maintenance alone would lead to anyone’s demise.) And while it took 500 years, all this manic clipping and one-upmanship among the Caesars undoubtedly led to the Fall of the Roman Empire.
Pictured: topiaries at Compton Wynyates, a country estate in Warwickshire, England. The Compton family has been the resident of record since the year 1204.
Are you one of the more than 17,000 gardeners following me on Pinterest? Well, why not?
Frequently the verger was surrounded by a protecting wall, of more or less architectural pretense, with towers and accessories conforming to the style of the period, and decorative and utilitarian fountains, benches and seats were also common accessories.
Henri IV in an Old French Garden, illustration by Blanche McManus.
Royal Palaces and Parks of France by Francis Miltoun (1910).
This Terrasse de Henri IV, so called, is one of the most splendid and best-known terraces in Europe, and is noted for its extent as well as for its marvelous point of view, the whole panorama Parisward being spread out before one as if on a map, a view which extends from the Chateau de Maisons on the left to the Aqueduct de Marly and the heights of Louveciennes on the right, including the Bois de Vesinet, Mont Valerian, Montmartre and the whole Parisian panorama as fas as the Coteaux de Montmorency.
Terrasse de Henri IV, Saint Germain, illustration by Blanche McManus.
Royal Palaces and Parks of France by Francis Miltoun (1910).
