Parisian style extends above and beyond the city’s fashion boutiques and haute cuisine – the French capital is also home to some of the most elegant parks and gardens in the world. And from modest to mindblowing, there are hundreds to choose from.
Home to more than 400 gardens and parks, woods and squares, Paris is a paradise for outdoor types. But there’s more to these green spaces than trees and flowers – most gardens date back centuries and have remarkable histories, intricate landscaping, precious artworks and shimmering palaces. Here, five very different places in which to while away a Parisian day.
Versailles: Vast and visionary
The garden of all gardens, the grand and extravagant vision of Louis XIV – the Sun King – surrounds his lavish Palace of Versailles.
The gardens and palace were built between 1662 and 1710 to celebrate absolute monarchy and Louis’ unfaltering power, so it comes as little surprise that the centre of the 6,000-hectare layout is Louis…or, more precisely, his bed. The symbolic state bed sits in the middle of the palace, facing east – the direction of the rising sun. Behind the bedchamber, facing west, formal gardens, lakes, ponds, fountains, statues, intersecting tree-lined avenues and forests stretch as far as the eye can see – on a clear day, to the centre of Paris, some 17 kilometres away.
The gardens are so big that people – picnicking, strolling, running, cycling – become tiny specks in this vast, surreal scene. I look across the gardens from the upstairs rooms of the palace. It’s a grandstand view, with topiary hedges in the pattern of fleur-de-lys, tightly trimmed cone-shaped trees, lakes, fountains and hundreds of marble statues.
Louis gave the garden project to André Le Nôtre, a mathematician and architect with a grand sense of scale. Le Nôtre came from a family of gardeners: his father and grandfather worked for kings of generations past. He studied mathematics, painting and architecture before turning to gardening and landscape design. When Louis was 18 he met Le Nôtre at a party and hired him as the royal gardener. Le Nôtre spent the next 27 years on the Versailles gardens and, in so doing, changed the way the world regarded landscape design, with protégés using his principles in Europe and the Americas for the following century.
On the steps above Latona Fountain – its circular, wedding-cake arrangement of open-mouthed frogs, turtles and alligators – I take in one of Le Nôtre’s carefully designed grand vistas; across lawn lined with white statues of classical heroes and along the length of the Grand Canal to the horizon. The size of this man’s vision, and that of his patron king, was astounding.
As I leave by the side gate, I pass the Neptune fountain, a fabulous fancy with chubby cherubs waving bows and arrows while riding golden swans and dragons. The reflection of this shimmering fantasia, along with the pearly palace on the hill, is an image I won’t forget in a hurry.
Place des Vosges: Small and sweet
Place des Vosges, with its large linden trees, fountains and statues, is a great place to people-watch. When I arrive, I spot an amorous couple sitting under a tree; a young Parisian boy sits on the grass and plays his guitar (badly) to a girl who looks on, enthralled; small children whizz around the fountain on little bikes; and an elderly woman is taking her miniature dog for an outing in her handbag.
This perfectly symmetrical garden is as petite – it’s just 140 metres by 140 metres – as Versailles is vast, but it has its own appeal. Place des Vosges’ claim to fame is that it was Paris’ first open-air public square, built by Henry IV and inaugurated in 1612 to celebrate the wedding of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria.
The garden can only be entered by dramatic triple-arched gates and is hemmed in by 400-year-old red-brick buildings with steep slate roofs and vaulted arcades, home to boutiques, galleries, antiques shops and cafés.
Step outside the garden walls and you’ll find yourself in the district of Marais – long the aristocratic neighbourhood of Paris and home to some of the city’s most architecturally important buildings, those flanking the park notwithstanding. For 16 years, Victor Hugo lived at No. 6 (now a museum devoted to him) alongside numerous lesser-known madames, marquises and dukes.
Musée Rodin Gardens: For art’s sake
Auguste Rodin’s sculpture Le Penseur (The Thinker) – muscular, heroic, naked – sits in contemplation in a leafy corner of the garden at the Rodin Museum. I’ve wanted to see this artwork for years and am enthralled as I stroll around it, taking in the smooth black marble lines.
Rodin (1840–1917), one of the greatest artists of his era, lived and worked in the derelict Hôtel Biron – and entertained his friends in its overgrown garden – for the last 10 years of his life. On his deathbed, he donated his entire collection of sculptures to the French government on the condition that the building and its garden become a museum of his work. This was done in 1919.
I knew the Rodin Museum was going to be a Paris highlight but didn’t count on the superb three-hectare garden being so mesmerising. Besides The Thinker, the space is home to 25 Rodin sculptures, including Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais) and Balzac. The Marble Gallery, under a pavilion, shows more of his work: among them, a perfect hand emerging from a slab of marble; an ankle, heel and most of a foot; and half a head – waiting, it seems, to be released from cold, white stone.
The gardens are a treat, but Rodin’s pièce de résistance, The Kiss (Le Baiser), waits inside the Hôtel Biron.
Jardin du Luxembourg: The people’s place
This elegant 22-hectare garden is hugely popular, for its location in the heart of Paris as much as for the variety of activities on offer here.
Students from l’Université Paris-Sorbonne stroll along its grassy avenues; donkeys in a shady chestnut grove wait to give children rides; families line the bank of the pond, floating boats. The seats, and there are many, are hot property for kissing couples (again), old ladies who roll their trousers up to sun their shins, and visitors like me, who want to rest their feet and soak up the ambience.
I spot a café under trees: a long, cold beer would be nice. But on this hot afternoon, all the tables are taken and the queue is formidable.
So I continue strolling, past terraces planted with colourful clumps of flowers and garden beds studded with statues of kings, queens, saints and mythological figures – including the first, but much smaller model of America’s Statue of Liberty by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.
Jardin du Luxembourg was built in the early 1600s by Marie de’ Medici, wife of Henry IV and mother of Louis XIII. The garden belonged to her palace, of the same name, now home to the French Senate. I imagine she’d be happy to know that her estate is just as loved today as when she imagined it, some 400 years ago.
Jardin des Plantes: Getting serious
It’s the aniseed smell – from fennel seeds, the brilliant blooms of summer and the majestic architecture of the National Museum of Natural History, at the end of a long botanical avenue – I notice first.
Jardin des Plantes is France’s premier botanical garden, its 28 hectares landscaped with around 23,500 plants. It includes a winter garden in a graceful Art-Deco building and hothouses, one of which features Australian flora.
As with most Parisian gardens, Jardin des Plantes is loaded with history. It was founded in 1626 by Louis XIII’s physician, planted in 1635 as a medicinal herb garden, opened to the public in the mid-1600s, and became an extensive botanical garden after the appointment of Guy-Crescent Fagon as curator in 1693.
My favourite part is a late addition, le jardin de roses et de roches (the rose garden). It has hundreds of species of roses and from late spring to early autumn, these provide a visual and olfactory feast. If one is not swooning from the intense joy roses bring, there’s a thing or two to be learned about the diversity of this species. A rose is not just a rose, it seems. •
Photography by Liz Light.
TRAVEL FACTS
Air France offers flights from most Australian capital cities to Paris via Singapore. 1300-390-190;
airfrance.com
Rail Plus can help you organise train journeys around Europe.
railplus.com.au
when to go
The best time to visit Paris for its gardens is from late April until early October.
where to stay
Park Hyatt Paris, Vendome. 33-1/5871-1234;
paris.vendome.hyatt.com
what to do
• Versailles’ gardens are open every day from 8 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. Entrance is free. There are a handful of cafés across the park, but we recommend packing a picnic. To get there, take the Versailles metro from central Paris.
• Place des Vosges is open 24 hours, entrance is free, and there are plenty of cafés and restaurants in the neighbourhood. The park is in central Paris, near the Bastille.
• The Rodin Museum is closed on Mondays; every other day of the week, it’s open from 9.30 a.m. to 4.45 p.m. It costs one euro to get into the garden only, six euros to access the museum and garden. 79 Rue de Varenne; Metro line 13, Varenne station;
musee-rodin.fr
• Jardin du Luxembourg opens at 7 a.m. in summer, 8 a.m. in winter, and closes one hour before sunset. Entrance is free, and there is one café/bar. Boulevard Saint-Michel, Ile-de-France (central Paris).
• Jardin des Plantes opens at 7.30 a.m. and closes at 7.45 p.m. in summer (8–5.30 in winter). There is no cost to enter the garden, though there’s a two-euro fee to enter the alpine garden within it. The neighbourhood is home to a handful of cafés. 57 Rue Cuvier, Ile-de-France (near the Seine and next to Gare d’Austerlitz);
jardindesplantes.net
further information
The French Tourist Bureau can provide additional tips on travelling to Paris. 61-2/9231-5244;
au.franceguide.com 
