Parlez-vous gardening? Why you should steal these six ideas from France

The impact of France on how we garden has always been bigger than box parterres and topiary. It’s also about attitude. Do what French gardeners do and chart your own path. Show confidence and adapt these ideas to suit your taste, space and climate.

1. Avoid making an obvious design statement

No-one makes “effortlessness” seem quite as effortless as the French. For all the formality of Versailles, Villandry and other such historic showpieces, there are many more spaces that keep it simple. Even in Paris where there are hardly any front gardens, the few you do see look so unfussy and unselfconscious that you might think they are taken for granted. Some are composed of nothing more than long grass, rambling climbers, bountifully planted pots and a table and chairs, not necessarily matching. But anyone wanting to try this approach at home should know that it takes work to make a garden this relaxing. Nothing can be neglected. Everything has to look healthy, expansive and almost incidentally wondrous. Casual these gardens might look but ignored they are not.

2. When in doubt, prune

While the French have made a name for hard-edged topiary and hyper-flattened espaliers, their pruning takes many other forms, too. It can imitate the whip of wind and the gnawing of goats. Sometimes it turns whole rows of trees into an elongated shady umbrella, other times it exposes the sculptural trunks of trees or creates graphic lines out of shrubs. In France, gardeners cut every which way and, better still, they make it look playful rather than overly controlling. Return home from a French holiday and, whichever way your taste leans, you will find yourself taking up the secateurs and hedge trimmer.

3. Use the space below pergolas as everyday living rooms

This idea might not be uniquely French, but the French have taken it to new inspiring heights. Their densely covered pergolas are not only about public display but also about private function. There can be no telling a living space that sits below a wisteria-covered pergola apart from a living space actually inside the house. The fact that outdoor French lighting and furniture often doesn’t look expressly outdoor in nature only adds to the blurring of inside and outside.

4. Create green vistas even in the inner city

In Paris and other large French cities a balcony or window sill might be the only planting space available and yet, many apartments enjoy green outlooks thanks to carefully positioned containers and window boxes that frame views and soften hard edges. Even the barges on the canals sport pots of geraniums and herbs outside their windows and portholes so that passengers can be sure of greenery wherever they are moored. Everything looks better when viewed through a garden.

5. Gardens don’t have to be floral in summer

They can centre on leaves in all shades of green, grey and even brown instead. They can flaunt a variety of textures and forms and exude a pared back beauty that doesn’t rely on flowers. As the French climate, like the Australian one, gets hotter and dryer, the gardens that do best are the ones that focus on foliage in summer. This is especially true in the Mediterranean region where there is a growing band of gardeners planting low-lying shrubby gardens full of tough, drought-resistant plants, including rosemary, thyme, euphorbia, citrus and artemisa. The fact that these plants are often mulched with gravel only adds to the tough, textured look. Nursery owners Olivier and Clara Filippi have been leaders in the field and their own coastal garden near Montpellier shows just how diverse these gardens can look even in the hottest months. Olivier has revealed all their tricks in three informative books on the subject, all translated into English.

6. Make every space count

With outdoor space in short supply in French cities, no spot is too pokey or dark or against the odds to be cultivated. Rooftops and lightwells are turned into gardens, laneways are lined with pots, while indoor plants – small trees included – are squeezed into living rooms. I have even seen people planting spring flowers in large holes in the pavement. People see the potential in all sorts of places – and it benefits everyone.

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