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Parks & gardens, environmental visions

Royal tradition, Romantic renewal, hidden spots, an orchid farm, gardens as hommage or symbol
  •  France's most famous landscaping tradition comes from its kings...
Château landscaping that Versailles inspired (Croissy, one of many châteaux that circled Paris)

 

Because landscaping and architecture often connect, our specialist for the great parks (Renaissance water garden, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles) is a former professor of the history of architecture...

 

 
  • ... but another other stems from a cemetery, le "Père Lachaise" (founded, 1804)
The cemetery is most poetic in November, when nature evokes death serenely and All Saints' Day flowers adorn the tombs.

 

Heloïse and Abelard, Piaf, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison... are among the celebrities who rest in a place where slopes and nature evoke meditation. The number of tombs makes many hard to locate, even with a map: We help visitors find the graves that interest them...

 

 

 

and show sculptures whose imagination, tenderness and, sometimes, megalomania place them in the forefront of funerary art.

 

As well: a view that where a famous novel's closing scene takes place, and bullet-holes...
  • Some gardens are almost secret...

 

 

Montmartre
On château grounds, an hour from Paris

 

One even hides over tracks.

 

 

We climb these stairs behind a station snackbar...
to come upon a park that we will have almost to ourselves.

     

     

    • ... others, like Giverny, are famous  

     

     

    Monet, "Bridge and waterlily pond"

     

     

    • Horticulture reveals both science and luxury ...

     

     

    Orchids of new varieties

     

    One of the planet's three great orchid farms permits visiting greenhouses where row upon row of different bloom show its experimentation.

     

     

     

     

    The owner, who is our guide, explainis how the hybrids have been developed and must be treated. We may end with refreshments, served in the family's 19th-century salon.

    Nearby: Half an hour's drive southeast from Paris, this visit can precede excursions to Courances

    and Vaux-le-Vicomte.

     

     

    • ...or it projects a message by...

     

    •  ...honoring ties

     

    Part of the National Museum of Franco-Américan Cooperation in Blérancourt (near Château-Thierry in Champagne), this garden is on the site of a château that 1918's fighting destroyed. In hommage to the U.S. volunteers who so greatly helped France during and after World War 1, North American flowers replace the rubble.

     

    • ...suggesting a reconciled world

     

     

    New Year's card from the Foundation

     

    Banker Albert Kahn (1860-1940) devoted his fortune and his life to promoting peace.

     

    He created an environment where plants from different climates combine and Japanese, French and English gardens merge. These gardens are part of the Albert Kahn Foundation, in southwestern Paris, a few steps from the Seine.

     

     

    As well, he financed films that recorded life in over 50 countries, leaving an invaluable trace of vanished worlds. We may view these five-minute movies.

     

    The Albert Kahn Foundation is yet another way in which, between about 1850 and 1940, Jews contributed to the cultural heritage of France.  

     

     

    • We bring pictures of traditional parks or gardens if they are useful to the visits

     

     

     

    •Costs, 1-5 visitors

     

    ° To guide, 190€ per half day (3-4 hours), 290€ per full day, and to PEF, 20% plus dues. Public transportation is included, entry fees are added.

     

    ° To specialists, please ask us.

    ° Public transportation is included, but please remember entry fees to Monet's estate in Giverny and the Alb ert Kahn gardens and charge for the visit at the orchid farm.

     

    ° To driver (often optional): 40-55€ per hour inside Paris, from 50€ outside it.

     

     

     

    Credits: château / 18th-century engraving, unsigned ; statue / Courances; Giverny / Bill Dudley ; Albert Kahn gardens / Albert Kahn Foundation ; all other photos / Claude Abron