Nicole de vesian bio

As I collect flowers from the garden to arrange in a vase I learn fairly quickly how much talent is required in creating a beautiful arrangement and at that point my admiration for floral artist Katherine English grows even more. Katherine’s instagram feed is stunning and for me a constant source of inspiration. Along with sharing her stunning flowers, I’ve learnt about foraging for floristry materials and I have watched her grow as a business women. Katherine has created something which she clearly enjoys sharing through her photos and workshops. I hope you enjoy reading this interview with Katherine and I am sure she will inspire you to create beauty in your home.

Thanks also to Katherine for sharing her photos for this post.

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Tell us about your garden?

My garden is a city garden, sadly with no sweeping vistas or even much lovely, borrowed landscapes. But it is a refuge and nourishment always. I’m not sure of the size, but guess maybe around 1/8 of an acre altogether. I have gardened here for eight years, starting with some shrubs and trees, but really not a lot that has proved to useful or beautiful. Much has needed taking out, but what remains is a huge golden elm. I love the sense of protection it gives; it frames the house and garden and cools the house in the summer months. In the years I have been here what I want from my garden has been evolving constantly, and because of that many plants have come and gone. Some for a short trip in a wheelbarrow (to another spot) and some given away.

When I started learning floristry, I thought then that everything in my garden really had to earn it’s keep by being useful. So, my garden leaned to being a little flower farm, but my thinking has changed again. I’m now firmly of the belief that I only grow what I especially love, and what I know I can not easily source from local flower growers for my personal classes, workshops, and wedding work. And now I am changing what I grow again. I long for

Summary

After a brilliant career as a stylist in Paris and New York, culminating in ten years with Hermès, Nicole de Vésian (1916-1996) retired to Provence, where, at the age of 70, she began designing La Louve. Now a European icon, this garden was soon inspiring designers and gardeners from New Zealand to New England. Nicole de Vésian had, as Louisa Jones puts it, 'a feeling for space the way some musicians have perfect pitch - for volumes, planes and textures, all transformed by the liquid Mediterranean light.' On these narrow terraces, she created a garden for year-round living, minimalist but sensuous. The plants she shaped into beautifully proportioned, grey and green tapestries were often the very species which grow wild on the hillside opposite: cypress, laurel, arbutus, rosemary and thyme. Some visitors consider this a formal garden, others see it as wild, or even Japanese. Vésian also designed other gardens nearby, largely unknown, presented here for the first time. Louisa Jones reflects here on Vésian's art, on her evolution and the qualities that make her works cherished by so many even long after her death. Jones includes a rich range of testimonials from former colleagues such as Marc Nucera or Jean-Marie Rey, distinguished visitors such as Christopher Lloyd, and garden historians such as John Brookes and Sir Roy Strong.

For the film, see The Wolf (1949 film).

La Louve is a private French contemporary garden, open to the public, in the town of Bonnieux in the Vaucluse department of France. It was created beginning in 1986 by Nicole de Vésian, textile designer for the Paris fashion house of Hermès. It is classified by the French Ministry of Culture as one of the Remarkable Gardens of France.

Description

The gardens are laid out on a series of terraces, and are designed to be in harmony with the surrounding natural landscape. They incorporate local rocks and stones, including stone balls and smooth stones from the Durance River, trees and bushes trimmed into geometric shapes, and wooden benches placed for meditation and contemplation. The garden includes an Arbutus tree shaped by artist Marc Nucera; fig, cherry, apricot and apple trees; roses and iris; and native fragrant plants of the region, including lavender, rosemary, and santolina.

History

The site was purchased by Nicole de Vésian when she retired from Hermès and devoted her time to gardening. Over the course of ten years, she transformed a village house with land exposed to the south into a complex design of stone and greenery. As she approached the age of eighty, she sold the garden in 1996 to art collector Judith Pillsbury and began a new garden above the village. Judith Pillsbury preserved the original design and maintained the garden until 2014 when it was bought by its present owner Mme Sylvie Verger-Lanel.

See also

References

The history and description of the garden is taken from the site of the French Committee for Parks and Gardens of the Ministry of Culture.

External links

43°49′18″N5°18′23″E / 43.82167°N 5.30639°E / 43.82167; 5.30639

Tomorrow a book about my all-time favorite garden will be available in the U.S.  It is called  “Nicole de Vésian: Gardens, Modern Design in Provence”.

I’ve never been there, having only visited it through photographs in books and magazines, which I keep in a special folder, ready for me whenever I need a visit.

The garden in called La Louve, which means She Wolf, and it was created by a woman by the name of Nicole de Vésian.  Nicole was a leading post-war French stylist, fashion designer and publicist.  Friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas and Picasso, she was a designer for the Hermès in the 1950s and 1960s, working alongside a young designer named Christian Lacroix. After the death of her husband when she was 70, she moved away from Paris, to Provence, where she bought a house in Bonnieux. Located in the Luberon,  de Vésian’s dilapidated estate was transformed into an amazing and influential garden.

Nicole sold her estate shortly before she passed away, but you can visit the garden, by appointment, once a month (closed in July and August) for an hour, in groups of at least 10 people (so you can see why I never got to see it!).

On the other hand, if you’re interested in buying the property, the estate is being handled by French realtors Emile Garcin, and the property is listed as being in the “2,300,000€ to 5,000,000€” category. (For Americans, this is between $3.3 million and $7.2 million.)  Or you can buy the book on Amazon. The photos in this book are the best pictures of La Louve that I have ever seen, and were taken by a British photographer by the name of Clive Nichols.

Here are some of his photos.

And now you are probably wondering why I don’t have a garden that looks like hers….good question! But I have plans!