Google Translate will tell you these mysterious gardens are the ‘fishing walls’ of Paris. Do not believe Google Translate, though arguably, being 600km of nearly 3m-high ‘peach walls’ in Montreuil, at the eastern edge of the city, they were once only marginally less surreal. What they are now, is a joyous outdoor shrine to the…
Category: France
Ooh, La, La: French Strawberries
Gariguette is probably my favourite strawberry ever. Long, conical and superbly flavoured, it reminds me (to look at, of course) of the strawberries Dougal used to eat in the Magic Roundabout, though frankly it clearly also inspired the local Brians too. My meagre haul was decimated by slugs. It’s supposed to be a really…
Les Hortillonages
Sebastian Faulks’s trench warfare epic “Birdsong” begins gently enough. Sketching a world soon to be lost in the carnage of war, Faulks chooses an extraordinary subculture within a sleepy Picardie town-centre as a cipher for French petite-ville normality. Amiens’ Hortillonnages – or floating gardens, are, even at the time Birdsong is set, wonders to be…
The Event Gardener 