Floral Notes from Paris.

  
     When I was growing up in Bury St. Edmunds, a favourite treat (as an under-five) was a visit to the Abbey Gardens to feed the ducks. Once you'd gone through the magnificent Abbey Gate, you followed a wide path between very formal flower beds. Flawlessly geometric, they were the absolute opposite of my parents' rambunctious herbaceous borders. These were gardens to be looked at, not played in, with "Please Keep Off the Grass" signs everywhere . The inspiration behind these were probably the formal gardens of France such as you see at Versailles.
      When we go to Paris, I'm always fascinated at what the gardeners have planted in the numerous public gardens. One day I'd like the meet the brains behind those in the enchanting little park just east of Notre-Dame cathedral. Scouting through the x thousand photos I've saved on iPhoto, I found these that I took a few years ago. Poppies, wallflowers and foxgloves wouldn't be the first combination you'd think of but it's enchantingly pretty.

   Here's what you'll see at the moment in the same gardens. Much more formal, minimalist even, with bamboo and white-painted branches used as decoration. It's still all constrained by tidy lawns and little fences but, behind those stand-offish exteriors it's time to have fun and break all the rules. Somewhere there's a doctoral thesis to be written on this.

      On to the next garden. Even though the Jardin des Plantes is right beside the Gare d'Austerlitz, the station we arrive at/leave from is we don't take the TGV, we've never been inside its gates. Possibly because we're always towing luggage. This time, I was determined to go there, so I metro-ed over to the main station, and made my way outside, just across from the Seine, and into the gardens.
      They are huuuumungous. To wander off for a moment, Paris is a glorious mix of intimate narrow streets and grand, colossal spaces. France's largest, the garden is a grand enormous space and then some, with a pathway that seemed to go on for miles.  Museums, a plant school,  a zoo, vast greenhouses, you could easily spend a day here. The National History Museum's web site calls the collections the "archives of the planet," possibly because they have over 60 million stones, bones, meteorites and plants. That's for next time.
      I only had a couple of hours so all I can give you is a little taste.

You walk and you walk and you walk and you walk. You're so close to the city but the only sounds you hear are birdsong and schoolchildren.

All plants are identified.

Four men went to mow....I think this scene has an Alice and Wonderland feel to it. You almost expect the Red Queen to appear suddenly.

Every French garden has a potager. The one here is quite small and tucked away in a corner.

If I ever grow raspberries, I'm going to train them like this rather than straight up. I'm sure they get more sun this way.

Really big greenhouses. Really large numbers of schoolchildren.

A demonstration meadow shows how beautiful wild flowers can be.

Memories of Summer--An Extraordinary Garden

   First of all, apologies for not posting in such a long time. We had a busy but wonderful autumn with loads of friends staying, market visits, I know, excuses, excuses. Mea culpa. I promise to post more regularly and to kick off with a look back at some of the terrific events we enjoyed over the past few months.
   Certain events you mark down on the calendar so you'll be sure to go there next year. Le Jardin Extraordinaire is now on the list. Back in September, on a stinking hot Sunday, we drove to the village of Lieurac about 12 km away not really knowing what we'd find.

     So come with me and I'll tell you what was there.

  Following hand-painted signs, we took a side road and, even though it was only 10:30 in the morning, the car park--a meadow shaved down to pale prickly stuble--already had a good few vehicles lined up in rows We joined them and, knowing it was going to be a sizzler of a day, covered the windscreen with the sun-shield. A dusty track led towards a house but, long before we got there, we were drawn into a tunnel of green. Built of branches, the tunnels linked two domes and everything was covered in greenery. You didn't have to stoop to get through but you did have to move to avoid the enormous gourds that hung from the greenery. Long ones, round ones, dappled ones... Elsewhere blue-violet-flowered climbers twined around their supports.

It was quite magical walking along this dappled pathway completely
surrounded by vines.

I don't know what these are but aren't they spectacular?

   

     Between all this lush greenery, we could see a meadow outside so crammed with flowers, it looked like a Monet painting. Exiting the tunnel we found people giving back massages, kids dancing naked under a solar-powered shower, sculptures, paintings, and a pathway that led down beside a river that chuckled and sparkled in the sun. All in all, a glorious, sensual day.

Down by the river, these strange "creatures" hung from the trees. Gourds had been
hollowed out, planted with grass and then hung upside down.

River stones meticulously stacked.

Circles of stones in the river filled with green plants.

The river flowed around installations like these--dozens of bright sunflower heads
framed in stones.

This barbecue put was huge--maybe three metres or more at its widest.
Lots of folk had camped overnight and I suspect this had
been the site of a huge communal feast. Peter pointed out that, at night, the view
from a plane would have been of a huge glowing heart.

Kids could put on plays in a miniature theatre.

Some brands of yogurt come in these little glass pots which everyone saves and uses as
tea-light holders. Hundreds and hundreds had been attached to wires along the
pathways that led between the flower meadows and down beside the river.

The event is as much about art as it is about gardens.

For lunch you could have baguettes with ham and cheese, or salad, or Indian food
and--on this high thirties day, cold beers.

Huge Thanks to the Jolly Jardiniers

 Men with rampant power tools are an unbeatable combination. At one point, a thin red line of three advanced across the lawn, strimmers strimming at full blast, decimating the weeds. Meanwhile (although he never did manage to activate his power saw) another swung from what I'd always known was a perilous branch of an ivy-throttled apple tree--and downed it. A special thanks to the someone else who dug up the roots of the large bush that once swamped the pergola. Now there's room for our small, newly painted round table, and bistro chairs. White linen and gins and tonics anyone? 

   Last Saturday morning wasn't all wanton destruction. Things got built too. One group dug us a large vegetable garden. Another constructed a small wall and used the rest of the large heap of rocks to construct a small walled garden. A long bed was dug against the west hedge. The garden path was completely cleared and sprayed clean. The former thicket of elder saplings is now a "thinnet."

   Meanwhile, a friend and I bundled all the branches as they were cut so they could be trundled through the house to join the growing great wall of green garbage bags. 

   Fast forward to Monday morning and a bit of explanation. I'd read in the periodic newsletter that the mairie sends out that the Communauté des Communes will pick up dechets verts--green garbage. A couple of weeks ago, I dropped in at their office, the same place that organizes composters, and learned that a truck was scheduled to visit Léran on May 4. 

   So, Monday morning, off we went to the market in Mirepoix, leaving our gargantuan amount of green garbage in front of the house. We returned, some hours later, to find it still there. Gloom and despondency especially when I opened the letter that had arrived in that morning's post to read that the limit for pick-up was two cubic meters. 

   Minutes later, a giant truck turned down the impasse, its metal claws at the ready. Within 10 minutes, all our green garbage was gone. 

   I'm jumping ahead here. So let's flash back to Saturday, around 1:30 p.m when the jolly jardiniers sat down to lunch.

Lunch in the Garden

Friends Richard and Dorothy who live in St. Colombe sur l'Hers invited us over for lunch at noon. There went the afternoon. Because the mix of abundant sunshine, terrific food and a bunch of good people, turned it into a classic five-hour French dejeuner.

Richard and Dorothy's house is up a winding road with postcard views across the Hers valley to the treed hills beyond. Their garden is enormous: a vast undulating lawn, a bed of bright flowers, a lavender hedge, fruit trees, and in the top right-hand corner, a stand of tall bamboos. The term for a thicket of bambous is a bambouserie. One of those French words that sounds as though it should translate as something else. A riotous party or a rather clever scam perhaps.

We are the former. All of us English except Peter, the lone Canadian, so, in Brideshead Revisited style, we begin with tall glasses of Pimm's on the terrace. 

Here's what we eat: chive-garnished individual terrines of salt cod and seafood, cold roast pork with carnelian-pink quince jelly, salmon quiches, green salad with heavenly olive oil to drizzle over it, potatoes, tomatoes....a platter of cheeses, drippingly fresh melons and nectarines, and blackberry tartes with crème fraîche all punctuated by liberal pourings of rosé, white or red. Delicious cool dishes that couldn't have been better on an extremely hot day like today. Driving home, I thought "all we'll want for supper is maybe a little pasta. Maybe not even that." In the end, and quite late, we snacked on baguette, cheese and fruit.