Our family spent a week over the holidays in Paris, celebrating a jumble of anniversaries, birthdays and other life events that rushed by without appropriate fanfare.
As I wander the streets of a city, I find myself exploring my surroundings through the eyes of a gardener, observing how the planted world exists in other places.
I have to confess, I don’t much like formal French gardens, with their strict geometry and long straight vistas. The Tuileries and the Jardin du Luxembourg, two famous Parisian gardens, are way too disciplined for my taste. I appreciate the effort it takes to create and maintain those pristine rows of plants and painstakingly pruned trees, but I prefer a garden I can get lost in, at least for a few minutes.
Paris was full of wonderful botanical surprises, even in late December. Parisians take their flowers seriously. Across the street from our apartment on the Left Bank was a busy florist shop that was open every day except Christmas. It was the first business on the block to open every morning. As we enjoyed our morning coffee and croissants, we watched the proprietor, a short, stocky man who looked a lot like the deceased Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, busily setting out his wares. These included pots bursting with hyacinths and tulips almost ready to bloom and tin florist pails holding masses of long-stemmed pink roses and sprays of Christmas greenery.
I imagined how all-consuming such a profession would be and I wondered whether the man had a happy life with his flowers. Did he have a wife and was she the grateful recipient of daily bouquets that weren’t quite fresh enough to last till the next day? Or after so many years, were the flowers just another commodity, like ball point pens or dish soap?
Parisians are dedicated to the high art of holiday decoration. Swags of white Christmas lights twinkled over our street, lighting up the darkness. A few blocks away, the windows of Paris’s famous department store Le Bon Marche were filled with dancing fir trees. In one window, trees danced the can-can, lifting their evergreen skirts to reveal frilly white petticoats and red bloomers. In another, the trees performed a ballet, spinning in their gauzy white tutus and toe shoes. Farther along down the block, a group of fir-tree soldiers marched and twirled batons. Crowds gathered in front of the windows at all hours; little children were dazzled by the spectacle. I was, too.
One day we wandered into the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden created in 1626 by the physicians of Louis XIII as a royal medicinal herb garden. The garden eventually expanded to include a school of botany, natural history and pharmacy and now is home to the city’s natural history museum. In the winter, when flowers are scarce, the Jardin’s rich collection of evergreens comes into its own. From the hilltop labyrinth, we viewed a towering Cedar of Lebanon with its iconic flat canopy of branches. Planted in 1734, it’s the oldest specimen in France. The Jardin des Plantes also contains a fabulous Alpine garden, with plants from Corsica, Morocco, the Alps and Himalayas.
The famous sculptor Auguste Rodin lived the last ten years of his life, from 1908 to 1917, in a studio housed in the Hotel de Biron, an elegant 18th-century mansion on the Left Bank that is now the Rodin Museum. I happily discovered that one of the building’s earlier inhabitants was a passionate gardener who was said to have spent more than “200,000 livres” every year on tulips alone. (I don’t have any idea how much that is, but I am guessing it’s a lot.) The grounds of the museum are the largest private garden in Paris. The climate in Paris is mild enough so that a few hardy roses among the garden’s some 2,000 rosebushes were still in bloom here and there. A heartwarming sight on a cold, gray day.
Many of Rodin’s best-known works, including The Gates of Hell and the Burghers of Calais, are displayed in the garden. His monumental sculpture The Thinker is tucked in among a group of enormous conical yew trees, so perfectly shaped they looked fake. After being mesmerized by the windows at Bon Marche, I almost expected these trees to start dancing.
Of course, the trip made me yearn to return to Paris in warmer weather to see these hibernating gardens come to life. But our week there was a wonderful reminder of the limitless joys of the plant world, indoors and out, real and fantastical, no matter where or what time of year you seek them out.
Mickey Rathbun, an Amherst-based lawyer turned journalist, has written the Get Growing column since 2016.
The subject of the clinic at Hadley Garden Center on Jan. 19 at 1 p.m. will be Understanding Invasive Plants: The Problem and the Choices that Help. 285 Russell St. (Rte. 9) Hadley. Call 584-1423 for more information. Free, but these sessions fill up fast so it’s best to come early.
The Hitchcock Center in Amherst has a great lineup of programs for children this winter. Here are some of its offerings:
Curriculum day play at Hitchcock Center
Come play outside on Jan. 22, a day off for Amherst elementary schoolers. Aemelia Thompson will lead a day of winter fun. Bring a snack, lunch and water bottle and come prepared to play outside, no matter what the weather! 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Ages 6-9, grades 1-3. Members: $60/nonmembers: $65. Depending on enrollment, kindergarteners and 4th graders may be able to join. Limited to 10 participants.
Second Saturday family science series
The Feb. 9 session, will examine tracks, traces and trails of animals in winter. These monthly sessions are designed for children with their parents to explore cool topics in nature. 10-11 a.m. Free. Groups of 6 or more should call in advance. Registration is encouraged.
Celebrate winter in the outdoors with your preschooler and Colleen Kelley. On Jan. 25 the group will have fun slipping and sliding in the ice and snow. On Feb. 15, Kelley will lead the group in an exploration of signs of animals in winter. Both sessions are 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Come prepared for outdoor exploration.
Members: $20/nonmembers: $25
Homeschooler discovery days
The Hitchcock Center is offering 6 sessions for homeschooled children on Jan. 29, Feb. 5, Mar. 5, Apr. 2, May 7 and June 11, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both first time and veteran homeschoolers will explore fun topics in science and nature in mixed-age groups. The sessions will include meetings with science experts and field trips. Limited to 12 participants per program. Ages 6-12; almost-six year olds are welcome. Members: $45 per session/nonmembers: $55.
Your child can spend days off from school learning and playing outside at the Hitchcock Center. The campers will explore topics in spring ecology while playing games, making crafts and spending time with the Center’s live animals. Winter: Feb. 18-22. Spring: Apr. 15-19. 8:30 am – 3 pm .Sign up for as many days as you wish. Ages 6-10, grades K-5. Limited to 15 participants per age group. Members: $60 per day/nonmembers: $70 per day.
For more information about these programs and to register, go to: hitchcockcenter.org
How does a sunrise make you feel? Or a mountain veiled in clouds and shadows? Can these feelings be captured with a photograph? On Jan. 30 at 7 p.m., at the Forbes Library in Northampton, join professional photographer Michael Zide for an inspiring visual presentation and talk exploring the answers to these questions. In this presentation sponsored by Kestrel Land Trust, Zide will share his photography and talk about the “search for self” in the way we see the landscape, and how we choose to express our emotional connection to place through the photographs that we make. Reservations strongly recommended. Free, but donations are welcome. For more information and to RSVP, go to: kestreltrust.org
On Sat. Feb. 2, Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston is hosting a couple of interesting events for gardeners eager to get a jump on the upcoming season. From 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. seasoned garden professional Dan Jaffe will give a presentation on propagation that focuses on what to propagate as well as the techniques for propagation. As he will explain, not all seeds and plants are equal when it comes to propagation success rates. Participants will learn what to propagate for maximum plantings and will plant a seed flat for putting out in their garden this spring. All materials included. Cost: members: $50/nonmembers: $64
In the afternoon, from 1 to 3 p.m., Jaffe will present a talk he calls “Design-less Gardening, that examines the hard and fast rules of gardening. He’ll explore such questions as: how many inches of bark mulch is need between plants? should weeds be pulled? is it necessary to clean the garden every fall? Some of these rules make sense; some do not. Jaffe will discuss these rules and explain how we can build beautiful, resilient, and ecologically viable gardens without the services of a full-time gardener. Cost: members: $26/nonmembers: $40.