Forgive me for re-blogging these photos from 2011, but I am missing the particular beauty of May in the northern hemisphere.
This is a garden overlooked by the Chateau de Blois in France.
I took these photos in May 2007.
The garden was designed by Gilles Clément.
The hedges are yew. In between are Mutabilis roses and Stipa gigantea. I have forgotten all the emerging perennials, but believe I saw Joe Pye weed and anemones.
I started looking for something more on the work of Gilles Clément and came across this interesting lecture that he gave for UCSD, “What is the Third Landscape?”
In the film clip above, Clément defines a garden as an enclosure “done in order to protect the best.” Today, he says, the best is “the life, mostly the diversity.” He discusses his design concept of “garden in movement.” This is the name of the section of Parc Andre-Citroën in Paris that he designed, and which I had foolishly thought referred to a garden with a lot of wavy plants. Continue reading “More on Gilles Clement”
While transferring some old files to a new computer, I found these photos of a walled public garden near the château in Blois, France. I took them in the spring of 2007.
The garden was designed by Gilles Clément and was built in 1987. The section I photographed is a wonderful blend of the structured (hedges set in strict lines) and loose (grasses, large rosebushes, and tall perennials planted between).
The tops of the yew hedges are not level, but are sheared into rolling curves. With the grasses moving in the wind between them, you sense the motion of waves, even in this very formal garden layout.
You can read about Gilles Clément in a brief article from the February 2010 issue of Garden Design. He also designed the more well-known Moving Garden at the Parc André-Citroën in Paris.
Click on any thumbnail photo below to scroll through all the enlarged pictures.
Gilles Clément
Gilles Clément
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