Are you the flower man?

Lilium regale

Beautiful by day and magical by moonlight.

Now playing: Cat Stevens - Moonshadow

An exile's garden

Part of William Beckford's exile was spent at the Quinta de Monserrate in the hills of Sintra, Portugal. Here, too, he left his mark. The waterfall and Vathek's arch (above) are present day reminders of his brief tenancy (1793-1799).

Now playing: Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dew Drops Drops

A philosopher's garden

Large Flowering Sensitive Plant

The Night-blowing Cereus

The Blue Passion Flower

The Winged Passion Flower

The Blue Egyptian Water Lily

The Artichoke Protea

Group of Auriculas

The Temple of Flora, or

Garden of the botanist, poet, painter and philosopher

Sept. 1st, 1811

Dr. Robert John Thornton (British, 1768-1837) Publisher, ca. 1811-1812

Now playing: Maxine Sullivan - Skylark

Inspired

While Madame Ganna Walska rather famously said, I am an enemy of the average. 

She also opined, More is better.

''More is better,'' she said, and where traditionally one or two plants would do, Madame, in signature profusion, would place a hundred of the same species. She loved minerals. She adorned herself with jewels and her garden with amethyst crystals, lava rocks and seashells. Her sense of romance (it's hard to imagine being married six times without having some sense of the romantic) comes alive in her unique Blue Garden, which shimmers under a full moon. - Sean K. MacPherson 

Enemy Of The Average
April 14, 2002
The New York Times

Her legacy Lotusland,  beautifully captured by  Karl Gercens (via gardenvisit.com), is  living testament to her unique expression of spirit and perspective.





Now playing: Dead Can Dance - Toward the Within

This too seemingly went unnoticed

 

The greenhouse with its trompe l’oeil murals by Fernand Renard.

 

A detail from the Renard mural. 

View of the arbor from the greenhouse

 The basket house replete with its painting by Georges Braque.

Mrs. Paul Mellon’s fabled Virginia estate, Oak Spring, photographed by Jonathan Becker

 Bunny Mellon’s Secret Garden  

by James Reginato

Vanity Fair, August 2010

Now playing: Dinah Washington - Blue Gardenia

Enfant du paradis

Villa les Rhumbs, the childhood home of Christian Dior, and its gardens.

Of les Rhumbs Dior said, I have most tender and amazing memories... of my childhood home. I would even say that my life and my style owe almost everything to its site and its architecture.

In 1925 the young Dior, who was only twenty, decided to replace the greenhouse with elements that were much in vogue - a reflecting pool and pergolas. It was his mother, Madeleine Dior, who added the nearby rose garden. It was here that she would also manage to successfully cultivate lily of the valley. The flower that would later come to symbolise the House of Dior.

Villa les Rhumbs

Musée Christian Dior

Granville, France

Now playing: Christian Dior - Morrissey