There's a little bit of Japan in my France

The New Japanese GardenMy favorite cultural activity in France is visiting parks. I am convinced that nobody does parks like the French. From delicately manicured flowerbeds, to grandiose sculptures, to large, open woods, to green lawns filled with picknickers, the French have mastered both the art of landscaping and the ever-so-subtle art of good policing so that grass stays green and chairs stay in the park, even if that means that sometimes the police will ask you not to play your guitar… And since Paris is so consistently grey 87% of the year, on a rare sunny day there is nothing more delightful than a chair in the sun, a view of a chateau, a pretty lawn, and a fountain, and the best sandwich the local boulangerie can provide.
But this week, I had a slightly different park experience. In a neighboring town, still conveniently located only a few stops on the metro from my house, there is a very small museum, at the moment a temporary collection of photographs of India in the 1920’s, with the most magnificent garden. The visit starts in the Japanese village, with meandering streams, grassy knolls, bonsai trees, and pagodas. Through a gate-way of bushes, you pass into the English garden, with an open field spotted with flowers, a pond, and a wooden bridge hidden in a rocky cliff. After the English garden, comes a more typically French rose garden, with vines cultivated into different shapes and a stunning, white greenhouse. Around the corner is the rocky, alpine forest, complete with mossy boulders and twisting paths through ferns and pine trees, which then opens up into the “swamp” which is actually a man made pond filled with lily pads and surrounded by flowers. And then at the very end, comes the best of all, the new Japanese garden, which is a wonderland of ponds full of coy, rounded red bridges, enormous weeping willow trees, mountains of flowers, trickling waterfalls, and because the French are less lawsuit obsessed, rocks that you can climb on in the water. Each garden feels like it’s own oasis, bringing clarity and calm, even though from time to time you catch reminders that your still in Paris, the sound of chaos from the school next door, a glimpse of the street through the trees.
Paris can be a very monotonous city because most of it was constructed to look the same. Even when you take a trip to Chinatown or the Algerian corner, the vibrant street markets still take place under the typical Hausmannian balconies. But Parisian parks never cease to surprise me with their variety. Each one is unique. Luxembourg is grandiose, Buttes Chaumont is wild and monumental, Place des Vosges is calm and isolated. And in the little cultivated garden I found, you can take a walk around the world from the meadows of England, to the Swiss Alps, to a Japanese tea garden without straying far from home. And that, to me, the endless variety at the tip of your fingers, is what makes cities so spectacular, and worth putting up with the noise, pollution, and dirt.