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World Class Design from Ancient Roots

The gardens in Provence are not just pretty pictures but a whole way of life that has evolved for thousands of years. Certainly there is beauty for the eye, but also heady fragrance, refreshing shade, a leisurely enjoyment of each season as it comes, and a delectable, light cuisine based on fresh produce…from the garden.

Nice market (Jones)
Nice market (Jones)
Luberon landscape (Vincent Motte)
Luberon landscape (Vincent Motte)
Clos Fiorentina (Jones)
Clos Fiorentina (Jones)
Provence home garden (Jones)
Provence home garden (Jones)
Click on each image to see it in full.
Marc Nucera: Le Terrain (Nichols)
Marc Nucera: Le Terrain (Nichols)

The picturesque countryside of Provence has long attracted international attention, but its gardens were little-known before the 1990s. Partly because they are very private, but mainly because, unlike northern Europe, Mediterranean cultures have never separated use and beauty, productive and ornamental gardening, practicality and pleasure. Gardens in Provence continue to cherish their agricultural roots. A well-grown, well-pruned cherry tree in bloom is as marvelous as any rarer essence and its fruit in June and fall color provide two more seasons of delight. Already in Roman times as later in Tuscany, landed estates combined productivity with elegance, their parks opening onto their fields and vineyards. The Romans were already expert in the art of pruning broadleaf evergreen shrubbery into formal shapes, essences like box, viburnum and lentisk that thrive in mediterranean climates. The Romans also developed a whole art of climate management which is still valuable today: hedging for protection from the violent north wind, a judicious seasonal balancing of sun and shade, and careful conservation of the garden’s precious life blood: water.

Vésian: La Louve (Nichols)
Vésian: La Louve (Nichols)

Mediterranean gardening is an art of living in harmony with the local logic of place—climate, soil, earth, stone, energy resources. Born of long human experience on the land, it is frugal and fruitful, serves many purposes and gives year-round pleasure. Any one feature, any one plant, can look attractive but also provide food and drink, scent, health and household aids, homemade pest controls, home crafts. Today, Mediterranean gardening adapts easily to our growing ecological awareness. And the individual creativity once necessary for survival today inspires sophisticated international design.

Provence has long been a pioneer region for the kind of refined landscape art now flourishing in Greece, Italy, Spain and Morocco. Gardeners and designers from all over the world admire Provence for its rare balance between earthiness and sophistication, already evident in its rural architecture and landscapes, but nowhere more seductive than in the current blooming of contemporary gardens.

Many thanks to my colleague and friend, photographer Clive Nichols for his brilliant additions to this site. See www.clivenichols.com and http://blog.clivenichols.com/
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