Contemporary French Garden Designs, Inspiring Landscaping Ideas for Slopes

Les Jardins d’Etretat is a neo-futuristic garden that extends over the cliffs of the Alabaster Coast, one of Normandy’s wonders with a view listed as a World Heritage by UNESCO. The garden is a playground where lush topiary, architecture, and contemporary art dialogue in all poetry. The remarkable garden designs offer fantastic views and great inspirations.

The tale of Alice in Wonderland inspires Jardin d’Aval. The garden is magically surrounded by fanciful plants and numerous yew arches, symbolizing the famous Aval cliff of Étretat. The sculptures on display are made from fallen tree branches and wood waste. Jardin Avatar is a gateway that leads visitors beyond the bounds of reality, into the magical realm of surrealism. There even trees make music. Strikingly trimmed plants beckon the visitor to step into a fairytale where anyone can find a path to their own Avatar.

The Jardin Emotions was modeled after the first French oyster farm, which was owned by Queen Marie Antoinette, and lies in the waters of the English Channel. The vision of the ocean floor became the main inspiration for this garden design. The trimmed plants echo the landscapes of the underwater world. It is home to a set of expressively sculpted faces. The sculptures capture the entire range of emotions and symbolize the ocean’s various moods and inhabitants.

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Jardin Impressions is the heart of the French garden designs. The garden opens up on the iconic historical panorama of the ocean and the cliffs of Etretat, which have inspired many great artists. Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vasily Polenov – all came here to paint. The topiary compositions embody the tides and ebbs of the English Channel, enhancing the effect of being immersed underwater.

Jardin Zen embodies a harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Only plants with white blossoms grow here, instilling into the viewer a sense of virginal purity and unity with nature. The garden features an audio installation to awaken the good forces and allows visitors to discover new ways of seeing their surroundings through art.

Jardin La Manche is renowned for its ability to inspire vivid emotions in visitors. When falling into the raging element’s vortex, one wishes to escape from it and stay alive. It is composed of mazes made of large-scale trimmed plants, evocative of the ocean’s troubled waves. The leaves’ silvery color in the plant compositions resembles the sea foam on the crests of the waves crashing against the cliffs in a storm.

Jardin d’Amont towers majestically over the rest of the garden. The plants morph into cliffs and merge with the line of the horizon. They imitate the rocky layers of the White Cliffs of Normandy’s Alabaster Coast and astonish with their mathematical precision and geometric synchronicity. The terrace of Jardin d’Amont is the highest vantage point of Les Jardins d’Étretat, overlooking the gardens and the enchanting scenery.

  by Ena Russ   
   16.10.2020