Your CartAh! To be in France. In a garden. What could be more relaxing and romantic than the classic French garden? Well taken care of, thoughtfully designed with plantings and areas for relaxation, there are many elements to ensure a classic French garden. But if you can’t visit France, you can create one at home! Here are some tips on How to Frenchify Your Garden.
Frenchify
VERB TRANSITIVE, VERB INTRANSITIVE
Word forms: Frenchi-fied or Frenchi-fying
to make or become French or like the French in customs, ideas, style & manners.
How to Frenchify Your Garden.
Plant Lavender.
Lavender is not only gorgeous to look at {softest sage green with lavender, purple, pink or white flowers} but the aroma will scent the air with delight. I personally love the bees humming from flower to flower too. Bees make for a healthy garden. Planting in unusual antique French containers make it even more special!
Create Seating Areas.
Every French garden has at least one pleasant place to sit and enjoy a coffee, a cup of tea, or a glass of lemonade in the sun. Even the smallest apartment in France might have a tiny balcony with one chair, in spring and summer you will see people out there, face in the sun, relaxing and enjoying all that is sunshine. Have a garden? Even better! Create a wonderful area to sit for a while, or to enjoy meals with family and friends.
Shop French Lemon Tablecloth >
Decorate with French Garden Antiques.
Classic French watering cans, pots, baskets and trugs all add to the ambience. Most of them can still work hard in the garden after 100+ years, too! Garden antiques are amongst my most requested things to find for clients, and it’s no wonder. There is something magical about their worn finishes and patina. Often there is a sentimental connection between garden antiques and ourselves. For me, they all remind me of my grandfather’s garden, and him, it never ceases to warm my heart with wonderful memories of him.
Sculptural Details.
Larger sculptural details add grandeur. Cast irons parts from antique French fences, large zinc finials? Mais qui. They all give us the illusion of living on a grand scale, a French chateau perhaps? Not to mention that they are great fun! These finials below are stunning, once part of a grand estate, now ready to decorate your garden.
Topiaries.
A darling of French gardeners, just a few beautiful topiaries make a statement. Buy them pre-grown, or for you who are more patient than me, grow your own! One of my new favorites are the hydrangea topiaries we bought last year for our own FrenchGardenHouse garden.
Small topiaries also have a place in the garden. I have several on the potting bench, which I press into service as a centerpiece for al fresco tables. Bentley looks admiringly at the lemon cypress topiary – although I secretly suspect he’s eyeing the strawberries and other food on the table.
The French {and most other Europeans} spend as much time as possible outdoors with family and friends. They treat whatever outdoor spaces they have as extra rooms, and decorate them accordingly. Comfortable seating, plump pillows, beautiful pots and antique gardening pots, cans, and utilitarian pieces all add ambience to fresh green and beautiful flowering plants.
Need some French garden inspiration?
READ:
The Best Kept Secret Garden of Paris >
Just beginning to garden? Read Mr. FrenchGardenHouse’s Beginning Gardening Guide >
You can take a trip to the French Riviera & tour of the gardens at Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. In France’s Cap Ferrat, it is stunning to visit, and offers a virtual tour of the gardens with nine different themes: French, Spanish, Japanese, Florentine, Provençal, exotic, a rose garden, a stone garden, and the Sèvres garden. By clicking on the small images on the bottom, you can tour parts of their inside and art collection.
To Frenchify or non? I’m trying to create french garden beauty in our own little square of the world – will you join me?
A BIENTOT
Shop for the best in French Antiques, furniture with the patina of age, vintage accessories to delight you and your family & friends, and French Country utilitarian pieces. Treasures that make your home fresh, beautiful, inspirational and above all uniquely yours. Visit our shop FrenchGardenHouse.com
Beautiful. Such great tips! Thank you!
Denise, I hope that you will have a beautiful spring!
I’m Itching to get outside after reading your post. We have a small garden that faces east beside the garage that we grow vegetables. The formal garden has a small koi pond. The Koi are 25 years old and much loved and will eat out of my hand. There is a bench where we sit in good weather and a small round table and two bistro chairs. Boxwoods surround the pond and Muscari Are grown between the boxwood
. There are pots with flowing flowers and an arbor overrun with Clematis . My sweet husband also loves working, watering and watching the going’s on there as well as myself.
Alice, your garden sounds so beautiful! I love that you have such beauty surrounding you, and that you too enjoy nothing more than being outdoors with the sun, flowers and birds. I think you are having two sunny days this week!
Lidy, I can’t begin to tell you how enjoyable this post is for me. Monnie and I are longtime Francophiles and have had the pleasure of many wonderful times spent in France. French gardens and parks are a favorite for us, and our own garden space is our retreat. Alfresco meals, tea and coffee times are spent in the garden as a daily routine when our weather permits. I so enjoyed your descriptions of all the special touches that we admire about a French garden. Thank you for this lovely post, written with such care and style.
Thank you so much Sarah! I love knowing that you and Monnie love nothing more than enjoying the garden and flowers, sun and birds. Happy Spring! xo
I’m all in, when you live in a climate that is cold and frozen half the time you want to spend as much time as you can outdoors. I have a deck on my house that is like a extra room for the summer. I plant many pots with flowers and this year I’m adding a recirculating water feature. Can’t wait to sit and enjoy the sound of the water trickling and the birds singing their songs, but winter is still hanging on, just have to wait a little longer. Love the beautiful French inspiration, beautiful post!
Bonjour, Lidy,
So enjoyed all your pretty setting’s and the garden is so nice and yes to be in France, Paris is calling. I alway’s think of my great time’s there, I wish you and your family a very Happy Easter~~~~~~~~Enjoy~~~~~~~~Jean~~~~~~~~~
Thank you so much Jean! I hope you have a wonderful Easter too!
The tour is wonderful. I am changing a wall in my dining room and I have a few ideas from the Rothschilds’. Always inspiring me. Have a wonderful spring.
I hope you have a wonderful spring too, Gloria! I’d love to see your new wall! xo