Arles encore

This new urban landscape is refreshing – renovated industrial buildings, new landmark tower and parkland accesible to all until early evening – and stimulating in conception and realisation. read about it here

” its nearly cubist geometry, coupled with the spectacle of its 11,000 stainless steel panels, inscribes it definitively in the Arles landscape. Conceived as an ode to the ancient town, Luma Arles has become like a tower of Babel for modern times” says fisheye. ” It’s clear Frank (Gehry the architect of the tower) hates the French” a comment on Dezeen.

Existing buildings have been refaced . . . the end of the Grand Halle will be covered with wisteria in a couple of years . . .

. . . and inside a work of Pierre Huyghe ‘After UUmwelt’ where worlds with animals, artificial intelligence and materials compose their own stories – sculpture and video – and manage to instil a sense of familiarity in an imense space (5,000m2). Interesting floor too . .

In La Mécanique Générale, I was taken with the aroma from the bands and swathes of eucalyptus forming the soft structure for Kapwani Kiwanga – Flowers for Africa – based on images that show floral arrangements and, in essence, that’s what it was which were present at a moment of historical importance when an African country gained independence. The flowers and foliage are left to dry so the decay evokes history, nostalgia and a sense of melancholy showing the failings of modernity and political degradation – social transformation, disenchantment and collapse. Stunning.

The park is only recently planted so work in progress and difficult and unfair to comment at this stage.  I shall return  . . .

. . and have lunch under here again.

In the Drum Cafe in the Tower, some walls are made of sunflower pulp and concrete and the pipes are exposed . . .

. . . and in The Main Gallery also in the Tower, Maja Hoffman’s Collection/LUMA Foundation is an eclectic grouping of conceptual pieces and labelled impermanent so presumably more to see in the future . . .

The interior reflects the exterior perfectly. Arles and the Arlésiennes are lucky.

 

In a house which becomes a home,

one hands down and another takes up

the heritage of mind and heart,

laughter and tears, musings and deeds.

Love, like a carefully loaded ship,

crosses the gulf between the generations.

Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies

of our passage: when we wed, when we die,

and when we are blessed with a child;

When we depart and when we return;

When we plant and when we harvest.

Let us bring up our children. It is not

the place of some official to hand to them

their heritage.

If others impart to our children our knowledge

and ideals, they will lose all of us that is

wordless and full of wonder.

Let us build memories in our children,

lest they drag out joyless lives,

lest they allow treasures to be lost because

they have not been given the keys.

We live, not by things, but by the meanings

of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery  Generation to Generation.

And a post from before.

bamboos and beyond

It’s been a while since the last post and, also, since the last visit to La Bamboueseraie a couple of years ago – how bizarre that the images are almost the same – eye to brain to camera to laptop to wordpress . . . and how strange that I selected a Neruda poem too. . . .

. . . and I see I mentioned the ‘endless photos of tall, upright” stems but I find them still so beautiful and evocative. The density of the spreading crop ensures complete shelter and seclusion from the surroundings. For a historical overview of this estate open the post of four years ago.

Installations from Pascale Planche using a few poles woven into ‘rhythmical dances that set a ‘ribbon of bamboo in motion. The ribbon rises and falls, sketching out its path and coils through space. It opens windows onto the landscape, providing an array of recollections in the minds and imagination of each person’. Materials used: phyllostachys bambusoides, viridiglauscens and Flexuosa; rubber and annealed wire.

The youngest member of our party working out how the bamboo water feature works  . . .

and he was sort of impressed with the laotian pigs in their well constructed, exotic habitat.

The Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’ never disappoints – elegant, stately, self assured – along with the bamboo tunnel which received a small thumbs up.

Then we took the steam train from the small Bamboueseraie station on the Anduze – Saint Jean du Gard line which runs across viaducts over the Gardon nudging the edge of the Cévennes and saw fire ravaged but spectacular scenery as opposite to the landscape of bamboo garden as possible. The poem, well, it reminds me how the touch of an experience simmers for a while and then can grow, and overwhelm, in a delightfully meaningful way.

“I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.” Pablo Neruda  If you forget me.

tuscany – pool garden – olive harvesting

Back to visit a project designed some years ago (previous visit and related post is here). The estate sits on the edge of town, Monte San Savino, with the majority of the productive land – vines and olives – to the south west. The drive sweeps around climbing up through the land . . .

. . . to the main courtyard. These clients have rather exquisite taste and furnish and decorate their house unusually and perfectly.

The old orto/ potager/vegetable garden sat behind these imposing gates. It’s a walled plot . . .

. . . and 15 years ago became the pool garden.

Lines of Acer campestre (field maple) originally planted for the functional attribute of using the young twiggy branches to tie in the vines. It has decorative attributes too, of course.

I see I was very taken with the cork oaks previously. Obvious functional uses but what glorious trunks . . .

. . . and the cupressus make fine full stops. We planted these below to make a screen from the town but also to allow views through from the house. These have been shaped . . .

. . . the rounded canopy of mature pines contrast the vertical habit of the cypress. Irrigation canals run discreetly around the site which is terraced.

Long breaches make air spiral

as tangibly as the heartwood.

Its’ only human to think the olive

speaks, that there are mouths

singing, screaming, even, in the gashes

and you can’t help but see a figure

twined in the trunk or struggling out.

Layers of xylem and crushed phloem

are other ways we see ‘tree’:

there are always these speaking

gaps to put a fist or a heart. Jo Shapcott  Trasimeno Olive

 

We also went to assist in the olive harvest and gathered 500 kgs over the weekend which made 90L of oil. Hundreds and hundreds of litres will be made from the 10,000 trees.

The youngest member took some time out on the odd occasion . . .

. . . but was very interested in our visit to the press ,Frantoio Mazzarrini, working 24 hrs at this time of year. Lovely trip, friends.

 

Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,

From storms defended, and inclement skies:

Four acres was th’alloted space of ground.

Tall thriving trees confess’d the fruitful mould;

The reddening apples ripens here to gold,

Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows,

With deeper red the full pomegranate glows,

The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,

And verdant olives flourish round the year.

The balmy spirit of the western gale

Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail:

Each dropping pear a following pear supplies,

On apples apples, figs on figs arise:

The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,

The buds to harden, and the fruit to grow.

Here ordered vines in equal ranks appear

With all the united labours of the year,

Some to unload the fertile branches run,

Some dry the blackening cluster in the sun,

Others to tread the liquid harvest join,

The groaning presses foam with floods of wine.

Here the vines in early flower descried,

Here the grapes discolour’d on the sunny side,

And there in autumn’s richest purple dyed.

Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,

In beauteous order terminate the scene.

Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crowned:

This through the gardens leads its streams around:

Visits each plant, and waters all the ground:

While that in pipes beneath the palace flows,

And thence its current on the town bestows;

To various use their various streams they bring,

The people one, and one, supplies the king. Alexander Pope (mod version G. Greer)     The Gardens of Alcinous

 

 

 

la louve in the luberon – echoing the forms of the surrounding landscape

The sky forms an important part of the composition when designing and developing gardens – a fact that is often ignored. Here at La Louve, the garden maker Nicole de Vésian, understood this fact. Her ethos for this garden was to structure and transform the steeply sloping site and echo the forms of the landscape in the Luberon. Read more about the garden here:

The natural growth of the Garrigue landscape – mostly evergreen plants – is mirrored in the planting within the terraced garden. Large scale – the beyond –  is transformed into small scale by clipping and controlling. Stone is also revealed and positioned as a sculptural element . . .

. . . so the inert, rigid property of stone sits alongside the living organisms of the plants. The forms can be similar but the textures contrast.

Moving down from the higher terraces – Terrasse de réception and Terrasse de Belvédere (shown in the photos above) – to the Terrasse du bassin where the quince (Cydonia oblonga) provides some shade and the layout changes to embrace longer internal views. I remain a tad ambivalent to this garden room – the bassin I found clumsy and the circulation here seemed confused. However our group of 20+ managed quite well with not much ‘after you’ as this garden is small scale  – designed to please one person  – so the issue of how a private garden can transform into public space is interesting. I felt we destroyed the atmosphere . . .

. . . I did enjoy the personal touches that have been retained.

And I also enjoyed the windows of short and also long views that the garden offers.

Louisa Jones has written about this garden primarily in ‘Nicole de  Vésian: Gardens, Modern Design in Provence’ and also in her great books ‘Gardens in Provence’; ‘Mediterranean Landscape Design Vernacular Contemporary’ and ‘Mediterranean Gardens A Model for Good Living’. She theorises and justifies and explains so well.

Good to see the iris and would have been good to see many more architectural invadors thrusting through such as Cynara. Apparently Christopher Lloyd enjoyed these dramatic and seemingly random intrusions during his visit years ago. But of course they were planned as de Vésian was a master.

The recently planted lavender field and how it looked when mature (a scan from double page spread in Mediterranean Gardens – A Model for Good Living  Louisa Jones. Keeping with the original Vésian idea of dome clipping the alternates is planned.

Do I feel the garden has become a mausoleum? Yes. The owners have kept true to the original ideas and should be applauded but what must it be like tending, controlling, clipping away without inserting personal creativity. To discuss.

Zephyr returns and brings fair weather,

and the flowers and herbs, his sweet family,

and Procne singing and Philomela weeping,

and the white springtime, and the vermilion.

The meadows smile, and the skies grow clear:

Jupiter is joyful gazing at his daughter:

the air and earth and water are filled with love:

every animal is reconciled to loving.

But to me, alas, there return the heaviest

sighs, that she draws from the deepest heart,

who took the keys of it away to heaven:

and the song of little birds, and the flowering fields,

and the sweet, virtuous actions of women

are a wasteland to me, of bitter and savage creatures.

Petrach sonnet 310 Zephiro torna, e’l bel tempo rimena’

 

ville et campagne

Ville – Arles; appreciating a sculpture by Marc Nucera – elegant but purposeful and somehow wistful –  in front of the Chapelle de Méjan. Then on to the Foundation Vincent Van Gogh  . . .

. . . where the courtyard displays a feature bursting with colour and water.

Inside, one of the exhibitions is Soleil Chaud, Soleil Tardif. Les Modernes Indomptés. Vincent’s railway carriages with other works showing the influence of Millet and Monticelli; some Calder patterns; Polke’s work well lit.

Metaphors of the sun, Mediterranean region and experimentation from Modernists and Post Modernists. Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers . .

. . . and No Birds. Also de Chirico and videos of performances by Sun Ra alongside vibrant LP covers – those were the days.

Later works from Picasso: Man playing the Guitar and Old Man Sitting.

Upstairs in the original rooms . . .

. . . an exhibition of an English Modernist, Paul Nash, curated as Eléments Lumineux –  “works imbued with a surreal atmosphere and a sense of the finite, against a background of death and war”(catalogue).

From the roof terrace, a well manged parthenocissus clings to the walls of a secret courtyard. And out into Place du Forum to gaze upwards.

Ville – Nimes; banks of Cistus monspeliensis flowering with panache alongside Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle.

Campagne – Anduze. La Bambouseraie en Cévennes a couple of weeks ago with wisteria in full bloom – heavenly scent – Davidia in discreet bloom and the final flowers on Akebia quinata and  so final whiff of chocolate.

from a previous visit

The Mind is a wonderful Thing  Marianne Moore

is an enchanted thing
like the glaze on a
katydid-wing
subdivided by sun
till the nettings are legion.
Like Giesking playing Scarltti;

like the apteryx-awl
as a beak, or the
kiwi’s rain-shawl
of haired feathers, the mind
feeling its way as though blind,
walks along with its eyes on the ground.

It has memory’s ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope’s fall,
truly equivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,

it is a power of strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory’s eye;
it’s conscientious inconsistency.

It tears off the veil; tears
the temptation, the
mist the heart wears,
from its eyes – if the heart
has a face; it takes apart
dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s

iridescence; in the inconsistencies
of Scarlatti.
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it’s
not a Herod’s oath that cannot change.

 

 

the garden of artists

An invitation by Mediterranean Gardening France to see the garden of 2 artists in St Remy de Provence. The view from M. Joseph Bayol’s studio on the first floor of his house across the wisteria to the bassin  . . .

. . .  just a small area of his studio packed with canvases, collections, materials and a few palettes with one below  . . .

. . . the bassin formally positioned with three cupressus at the far end and two very large and well proportioned metal structures on either side to support climbing roses. Scale and proportion are exquisitely handled in this garden superbly maintained by Mme Bayol. I use these superlatives in acknowledgement of both horticultural and aesthetic prowess. A garden to delight – purely personal and imaginatively handled. It shows love.

An informal pond inhabited by noisy frogs is well hidden but a charming discovery and typical of the elements and spaces to find unexpectedly on the journey around the garden . . .

. . . roses in full glory here in Provence at the start of May. Either clambering up an immense cupresses or a single bloom in a shady passageway.

The wisteria – gentle, elegant, discreet + certainly not the blowsy form – has a sculptural woven + twisted trunk. The finials on the rose pergola  – are equally underplayed . . .

. . . roses framing the entrance to the green house and quite wonderful cross views across the garden sheltered and hidden within a Provence town. One of the best gardens I’ve seen for a long while. Personal and poetic – a dream.

a few other days out to gardens with the MGF (I’m a tad smitten with this group):

https://juliafoggterrain.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/art-on-show-large-space-small-space-chateau-la-coste-max-sauze-garden/

https://juliafoggterrain.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/at-the-ecological-garden-au-jardin-ecologique/

https://juliafoggterrain.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/un-jardin-anglais-but-is-it/

 

Summer: for a few days

you lay around with us

breathed in pollen,

counted aphids,

watched us drop

one by one on to the path

where the scent

was especially heavy. Rose multiflora Jo Shapcott

art on show – large space + small space – Château la Coste + Max Sauze garden

Richard Serra – an installation, a sculpture, a site specific sculpture – at Chateau la Coste to be viewed and interacted with on the Art and Arhcitecture walk around the domain. Seemingly I just snap away at things I like nowadays . . .

. . . remnants of the old farming estate have been kept such as the threshing floor outside a new chapel which I didn’t photograph.  A more interesting building ‘Four Cubes to Contemplate our Environment- a maze like structure from Tadao Ando. A palimpsest of translucent layers/facades offering plenty to absorb and think about  . . .

. . . on the way down to The Meditation Bell.

The Oak Room (Andy Goldsworthy), outside above and inside below, caught the imagination of the kids.

Big names here – Gehry, Ando, Bourgeois, Benech, Sigimoto – in this large glamorous and glossy winery vineyard cafe dining shop gallery space ‘art escape’.  Most likely the Ai Weiwei ‘Mountains and Seas’ might have flown away as my visit was some time ago . . . but I remember the very very beautiful work.

By contrast, also near Aix en Provence, a jardin remarquable, in a small town – Éguilles. Max and Anne Sauze have created somehing special in a relatively small space around one lone tree. Now there’s more and consequently increased shade and lots of bamboo. Max, the master of metal, is also a master of arrangements, of collections . . .

. . . and of pleating paper. All objets are recycled and put together to form whimsical and quirky and thought provoking ‘things’.

Mostly site specific and crossing from design to architeture to horticulture but intensely personal.

In every corner and on all surfaces, he can’t stop himself – thank goodness.

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against ‘business documents and

school-books’; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry. Marianne Moore   Poetry 

un jardin anglais – but is it?

Below Mont Lozère, in the Cévennes where sweet chestnuts abound, sits Le Jardin du Tomple described as a ‘jardin anglais’. A term that is off-putting to me after all I have Great Dixter, Sissinghurst Castle and any number of English gardens on my doorstep for a good part of the year. Certainly the garden has an air of informality with curving grass paths flowing around large mixed borders packed with mature flowering shrubs – hydrangeas, roses, camellias, cornus – perennials et al and there is just a small amount of typical Mediterranean terracing.  So my understanding is that it is the planting design that has defined the description. The garden is also described as ‘secret’. Well, it’s hidden away amongst glorious trees – pines and cyprus, poplars and châtaignes –  the access is difficult but that, in effect, makes it an intriguing objective. And it is worthwhile.

The key to any succesful large garden is the water source whether river, springs or bore holes and here in this area it’s a necessity. The river has its arm around the garden and the water from the surrounding wooded hills is organised into canals, bassins and an informal rill. The huge lumps of schist rock from glacial fallout dominate the water course and the garden . . .

. . . there is a traditional water feature and nearby a marvellous clump of Iris x robusta ‘Gerard Darby’  – a truly brilliant plant – evergreen here and with just enough moisture in a shady area to show to full potential.

Cornus kousa surrounds this small pigeonnier and many more varieties are being planted throughout the site . . .

. . . more typically English is philadelphus perhaps and roses everywhere; more than 350 and many old varieties.

Areas of  mown grass offer easy circulation and a chance to enjoy the wilder, meadow type grassland.

On the wall of the mas is a collection of old implements hung in a decorative manner . . .

. . . equally decorative is the echeveria planting within the dray stone walling. I will be copying this, thank you, and maybe the setting to rest of old gardening tools too. So summing up and to answer my own question, a succesful juxtaposition of English and French garden styles – quirky with a personal touch created by the mother and daughter owners, Françoise and Véronique, much to see and admire  – and hurrah for their use of plant labels.

Visit it in the dark. Cicadas

Are inside your head as your hand

reaches towards the bark: you feel

The latent heat first then the surface,

Scrubbed with lichen you can’t see

But know from the fizz where touch

Meets memory. Before all this,

the scent, which is anti-language

(only, as it drifts into your body

the words slip in, as well),

and made of earth, air, sun

and human consciousness. Jo Shapcott     Of Mutability   Cypress

fun at the fair but no bulls

In Nimes, it’s feria – a great big party based around the bulls . . . bull fighting . . . bull running . . . and other bull events. These are not for me but I do like a festive occasion.  On the way up the esplanade through the stalls of food and of clothing, I came across young girls perfectly turned out but hanging around in informal queues  . . .

. . . waiting to take the stage and perform with their instructor, or was she a judge? Whatever she was big personality . . .

. . . we were all transfixed by her charisma.

Around the fountain, horse men and woman, from Uzès perfomed with impressive skill . . .

. . . and another formidable horse woman was also centre stage.

Crowds overflowed into the street around the bodegas . . .

. . . full of bonhomie. Beer and sangria flowing but no one seemed to show after effects . . .

. . . and musicians started impromptu concerts . . .

. . . full of fun and some performers showing superb skills.

It opens, the gate to the garden

with the docility of a page

that frequent devotion questions

and inside, my gaze

has no need to fix on objects

that already exist, exact, in memory.

I know the customs and souls

and that dialect of allusions

that every human gathering goes weaving.

I’ve no need to speak

nor claim false privilege;

they know me well who surround me here,

know well my afflictions and weakness.

This is to reach the highest thing,

that Heaven perhaps will grant us:

not admiration or victory

but simply to be accepted

as part of an undeniable Reality,

like stones and trees. Jorge Luis Borges

 

at lunchtime

France still closes down at lunchtine 12-2pm. Quite civilised and to be respected. Very pleasant sitting in Place de l’Eglise in Fontvieille – a small town that appeals more and more . . .

. . . wandering around the old streets, intrinsic compositions can be seen, admired and recorded.

A garden of pots – well tended plants, all thriving and with somewhere to sit and admire them . . .

. . . and a green roof, which some might say is just ‘les mauvaises herbes’.

Mûrier platane foliage on neatly managed trees shading a small modern square – very inviting – and just close by, in contrast, spreading branches of an ancient plane tree form a ceiling by the quarried stone face of the old town wall.

In the château gardens, now the town park, all ages are catered for. The home of Alphonse Daudet, the writer, now a museum dedicated to him and his work  – most notably “Les Lettres de mon Moulin”. Water courses run through the parkland where holm oaks and pines cascade over lauristinius and broom providing a simple vegetation matrix

Following one walking route (there are many others to Les Baux, to San Remy and to Eygalieres) around the top of the town, the landmarks are three windmills named after their owners – Tissot-Avon (2 owners), Ramet and Ribet also called St Pierre and also also called Daudet’s mill with sails completely restored.

rather fell for it and the whole area of Les Alpilles.

J’ai dans mon coeur un oiseau bleu,
Une charmante creature,
Si mignonne que sa ceinture
N’a pas l’epaisseur d’un cheveu.

Il lui faut du sang pour pature.
Bien longtemps, je me fis un jeu
De lui donner sa nourriture:
Les petits oiseaux mangent peu.

Mais, sans en rien laisser paraitre,
Dans mon coeur il a fait, le traitre,
Un trou large comme la main.

Et son bec fin comme une lame,
En continuant son chemin,
M’est entre jusqu’au fond de l’ame!….  Alphonse Daudet L’Oiseau Bleu