Description: In France today, the heritage of classic parterres and landscaped parks, of botanical inquiry and family kitchen gardens, provides an inspiration for fresh delights and creativity. Nowhere is there a happier harmony of past, present, and possible futures. Louisa Jones has been exploring this heritage ever since she acquired an old farmstead surrounded by vineyards and fruit trees in Southern France, nearly twenty-five years ago. Join her on an odyssey that takes you from Normandy to the Riviera, the Loire to the Pyrenees, and experience the full extent of the influence of the Renaissance in French country gardens.

Richly diverse, these gardens have been sensitively organized into six themes appealing to every taste. Highly fashionable Grandmothers' Gardens combine fruits, herbs, flowers, and vegetables in seemingly haphazard displays to offer nostalgic visions of cottage-style family life. Gardens for the Five Senses, inspired by the medieval and Renaissance past, focus on sensual stimulation. The Passion for Plants is exhibited in exotic, beautiful, and novel planting schemes. Formal Fancies take the elegance of the classiscal parterre but endow it with contemporary wit and fantasy. Nature's Ways emphasize the protection of natural biotypes and regional landscapes. And Planetary Perspectives show French gardeners giving their own creative gloss to worldwide exchanges of knowledge and resources.

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