The Secret Garden

It is said that if left alone, nature would reclaim an abandoned city in a matter of months. In such a dense city as Paris though, nature struggles to break through the stone and the smallest gaps are quickly plugged by ingenious constructions. The Cartesian French have always preferred to tame and control the exuberance and vigour of the wild, trimming grass to millimeter precise lines, and creating parks that are little more than geometric tableaux. How refreshing therefore on a hot August day to find a thriving garden of fruit and flowers carved out amongst concrete and bitumen.

The garden is the Jardin Partagé Leroy Sème in the 20th arrondissement, one of several such spaces in the city that have been given over to associations. For around 20 Euros a year, subscribers here can access the garden at will and plunge hands into the city soil, planting, pruning and plucking. The result of their work over the four years that the garden has been in existence is a profusion of flowers, vegetables and fruits, the buzz of bees and a backdrop of birdsong.

The history of the site bordering the Rue des Pyrenées is an inspiring one. The garden today runs alongside a small cluster of charming houses and looks a little like a tiny village which has slowly been swallowed up by the expansion of the city, but this rural scene only exists today thanks to the efforts of a group of local residents. In the early 90s, a project was on the table to level the ground here and build upwards of 130 apartments, a plan that may have succeeded if the residents group had not pointed out the fact that the terrain is an unstable one, and that any construction would severely damage all surrounding properties.

Although major construction had been seen off, it took another long battle to finally get the site protected and to install the shared garden here, and it wasn’t until 2005, 13 years after the residents began their protests, that the garden was finally opened. Today anybody can wander through the gate and watch the gardeners at work, or talk to members of the association and share a coffee with them around their powder blue shed. There are even deckchairs and benches where you can relax and watch butterflies flutter by.

Although it is little more than a pocket sized English country garden, this space, along with other similar projects around the city, helps Paris to refill her lungs and gives nature a place to stretch out her shoots and branches once more.


Note: This garden features briefly in my Street Art walk. Download a free copy if you haven't already done so!

A Deer at the Door

Walking along the Rue St Maur with my head bowed down against the freezing sleet, I look up and suddenly find myself eye to eye with a deer. In this modern, concrete environment next to an Atac supermarket, the deer is of course not a real one, but the effect is as the artist would have wished. Who is the more surprised at this instant - me or the deer? The mysterious artist who wheatpasted this image up on the wall late at night, has captured the deer at the moment just before flight, when it freezes at the crack of my footstep before skipping off into the surrounding forest of buildings.

The surprise is one of juxtaposition. City inhabitants are just not used to encountering nature in their safe streets where wolves, snakes and bears would never dare to venture. We worry about dangers of our own creation, but the city has long since won the battle with the natural world. In Paris, this was not an involuntary, organic development, but a planned evolution to protect the city from ignorance.

There are still 66 Portes (gateways) that give access to the city, a legacy from the last time Paris expanded its boundaries in 1860. Today the city is protected largely by the Périphérique ring-road, but it's an impossible job to guard all entrances. Although the city has been twice invaded since this date, in 1870 and 1940, the city fortifications have been less about keeping out invading foreign armies and more about a menace closer to home - the Parisians' fellow countrymen.

Paris is a personification of cerebrality and reason. In the 19th century, the city was both the industrial powerhouse and the centre of learning and culture, whilst beyond the city walls lay a world dominated by agriculture. This natural environment came to represent the simple, unrefined peasents from the provinces, a people that was being drawn to the capital in larger and larger numbers. To protect the integrity of the city, nature had to be kept out, a manifestation of a larger power struggle between two states - the city of Paris and the rest of the country. A planned city for logical humans was created, and nature was beaten back through the doors.

With the city's famously leaky defences though, the occasional trespasser still makes it through the gates. I look again into the deer's eyes and see the question she's asking me. Is she still an intruder?