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

Sydney Morning Herald

07-08-2025

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.
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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.