Thursday, December 23, 2010

Le jardin d’eau

Les Jardins de Castillon-Plantbessin were one of the gardens that made the deepest impression during our trip to the coast of Normandy. This blog was meant to be all about this captivating place and the many things I admired there. But whenever I think of Castillon, the first thing that pops into my head is one particular garden: le jardin d’eau, the water garden.

The layout of this garden is as simple as they come: a long rectilinear pool surrounded on all four sides by plants. The pool is dark mirror, reflecting the sky and providing as porthole to things below. Around it, a jungle of green plants are just on the edge of chaos, completely overtaking the space and leaving only a narrow path to walk on carefully at the water’s edge. The entire space feels secret, magical and powerful. I’ll just leave it to the pictures to hopefully convey the atmosphere, and there will be more to come on Castillon-Plantbessin. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!





4 comments:

  1. Hello Benevolent Wanderer,

    Thanks so much for this...and all your posts here. As mysteriously drawn as I am to this strange, dubious world of garden web logging I have to say that, for the most part, it's rather unsatisfying stuff. There are a couple of exceptions however, in my mind at least, that remain steadfast - a head above somehow - and this blog is one of them. Your photos are lovely. Atmospheric, perfectly understated. And their sequencing is quite thoughtful - it almost seems like you're capturing the feel of these places...as far as I can tell. And the content is impeccable - these gardens your describing for us never fail to be utterly perfect. Being able to peer in on such rarefied places like this very exciting for an exclusively non-wandering gardener like myself. Vicariously visiting these gardens has been such a treat. Well done. Thank you, thank you. Please keep it up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter –Thank you so much for visiting. I really appreciate your kind comment. It's encouraging to get positive feedback once in a while, even though I tell myself I'm just keeping the blog for my own learning (but of course also hoping to learn more by getting some input from others). The funny thing is that I was just planning to comment on your blog for the first time a few days ago, before the holidays got in the way... I'm getting on it right now though. And I have the exact same impression of the blog world – there are so many blogs out there, but if you are looking for something other than growing plants (which I also enjoy, just not exclusively), there are very few options.

    James – Thank you, I'm glad that was your impression as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Magical and fairytale garden, beautiful !

    ReplyDelete