secret gardens

1.: jardin lapin ouvrier, 14th arrondisement

I've always thought of Paris as a green city, meaning there are so many groomed parks with wide lawns and varied borders and little landscaped niches everywhere.  There are allées with arching lime trees and graveled walks. In some parks there is an extravagance of roses, a profusion of asters, or an horitcultural biodiversity.  Not only is this a city of architecturual beauty and grandeur, but one of landscape architecture elegance and grace.

I was in a shop in Montreal.  On the shelf was a little book called Secret Paris.  Knowing I would be in that city in just a few weeks, I flipped through the pages.  The booked opened to a section about Paris gardens.  Not just the beautiful gardens we already knew about in the Luxembourg, or Bois de Bologne, or the King's herb garden at the Jardins des Plantes, or at Rodin's museum.  But social, communal, working neighborhood gardens.  Part of our quest in the city this visit has been to wander through the arrondisements and find these little gems.  Our map has been laid out by www.jardinons-ensemble.org.

-Deirdre