IN FRANCE: Compared with English gardening how much more conventional and urban an art French gardening is! I suppose that is largely because isolated country houses are much less common in France; gardening here has had to conform more often to the requirements of the villa and the public park, whereas in England the traditions of the country house with its lavish herbaceous borders have influenced even the back gardens that one sees from the train and the bedding in the parks.
The tradition has produced some admirable results, such as the common use of wisteria along an upper rail above garden walls, or such as the use of oleanders and hydrangeas in tubs. The flower shops of Paris are marvels in their kind, and I know no other city where one can buy Iris susiana at flower stalls in the street, or where one can see a more beautiful use made of flowers for indoor decoration. But in general the gardens, I think, have far less variety, less wealth of material, less freedom from convention, than corresponding English gardens. The formal bedding outside the Louvre, for instance, is ineffective and most unfortunate in colour; and even the more ambitious of the villa gardens are too often content with a pudding of petunias or begonias. It is a pleasure to come now and then, in passing the gardens of Normandy, on the glowing colour of a clematis or a sheaf of phloxes, and here in Burgundy to find oleanders in tubs, and vines on sunlit walls, and Gloire de Dijon roses at home near Dijon.