Floral tapestry--the tapis de fleurs is the ultimate French gardening experience!

04/30/2003
Floral tapestry--the tapis de fleurs is the ultimate French gardening experience!

The first time I traveled to France, I was immediately struck by what I called--without knowing that this was the correct name--floral tapestries. In all kinds of public spaces, where Americans or British would use "bedding schemes" or "massings" (e.g. solid plantings of single plants, usually dwarf in stature and with large showy blooms), the French use floral tapestries or tapis de fleurs.



Besides its horticultural interest, I can't help mentioning that the difference between the tapis de fleurs perfectly reflects a profound difference in the sensibilities of Anglos and the French. We Anglo types like neatness, orderliness, simplicity, uniformity, and lots of bang for the buck. Frenchy types love complexity, variety, and "complicatedness," which I maintain differs from "complexity." Simultaneously, all this madness and voluptuousness (the crazy Latin side of the French) is contained within rigorous boundaries (the logical, cartesian side of the French). For that reason, these sumptuous floral tapestries are almost always planted in rigorously geometric beds often as not bordered with perfectly--even prissily--trimmed boxwood.



Because I veer decidedly toward the French in my love of complexity and variety, I love floral tapestries. I invite you to try planting one somewhere in your home territory this year--perhaps out front where you typically put the dread bedding plants. Floral tapestries are so much less boring than bedding schemes. And even more, they are hugely fun, because they offer you fantastic opportunities to be creative.

Just what is a floral tapestry? It's a mixture of annual plants, carefully selected to give an impression at once harmonious and exciting, of different colors, textures, foliage and flower forms, and heights. As you can see, this concept is as different as can be from that of a classic bedding scheme, where the plants are monotonously the same, and often as not arranged in garish bands and blobs.



The plants in a floral tapestry are intermingled in a way that gives an impression reminiscent of a wildflower meadow. And indeed, much of the inspiration comes from wildflower meadows, where nature inadvertently creates winning combinations which might never occur to the gardener. But in a floral tapestry, the mixture is not random. Rather, the plants selected for the mix are planted in a carefully calculated pattern.



If you come to Paris any time but during the dead of winter, you'll see lots of examples--good and bad--of floral tapestries. The one in the photo at left looks from a distance like a Frenchified bedding scheme. In fact, it's a hybrid of Victorian bedding and French floral tapestry. Come closer, and you'll begin to see what I mean.






The individual color zones in the planting are each composed of tapestry-like mixtures, which at least gives them a subtlety and nuancing that is lacking in a traditional bedding scheme.

Most Parisian floral tapestries are designed to be torn out two or three times a year and replanted for maximal seasonal impact. In this sense, the designers of these plantings are cheating on the real art of floral tapestry, which is to select a combination of plants that will stretch the interest of the tapestry over the entire summer and through the fall. Certainly, if you're designing a tapis de fleurs for your own home, that's what you'll want to do. Not only is it more practical, but it's more intellectually challenging as well!

Now that I've introduced you to the concept of the French floral tapestry, and hopefully whetted your desire to plant one for yourself, make sure to read the next article in Au Jardin on Planting Your Own French Floral Tapestry.

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