It was Audrey Hepburn in the film Sabrina who first advised me that one must traverse the Bois de Boulogne on a rainy day when one first arrives in Paris. I was not sure she meant in late January, as I was certain I would not smell the sweetness of the chestnut trees at this time of year. But some rain, a need for a walk, and the desire to visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton to see a show that paired the later works of Monet with the abstract painter Joan Mitchell gave me a few reasons to heed her advice, despite the season.
The walk through the park showed me something more about la vie en rose. The French don’t see the beauty of a world through rose-colored spectacles. They see the artistry of the world in a rose, in the subtle lines of a tree paired with the architecture of Frank Gehry, or in a tree branch being brought in as part of a sculptural installation at the Pinault Collection.
While the English question the connection and interrelationship of art and nature (perhaps most clearly articulated in the writings of William Shakespeare), the French see art and nature as one, indivisible, indecipherable entity. The late paintings of Monet capture the essence of water lily, or an agapanthus, in a manner that seems so straightforward yet artful that it calls to mind the hellebores opening up in the beds of the Bois de Boulogne. Lines are not drawn with a precision in either world and the mist from the rain softens the edges of the flower in the same manner that Monet seems to cast a haze around an iris in bloom. Nature does not imitate art nor the inverse; they are one.
A trip to terraces at the top of the Fondation shows how the French pair another art form —architecture—with nature. The tree, embraced by the soaring glass panels that envelop the museum like a series of sails, seems at home on the terrace, floating above the park as effortlessly as a piece of flotsam adrift on the water. At first glance, the bare branches of the tree could be an artwork. On the other end of the terrace, a living sculpture sits on the terrace, made up of an array of plants, plywood and a few other construction materials, and even a pair of old sneakers seamlessly in a perfect synthesis of the man-made and the natural.
Taking it all in, I feel like I can see the connection between humankind and nature as interconnected and one. And while I cannot smell the chestnut leaves, casting their scent when wettened by a soft spring rain as they have not yet leafed out, the smell of roasting chestnuts being sold by a vendor at the edge of the park proves that, together, nature and humankind help provide a justification for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne no matter what the season.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
