Updated for 2022! Not far from Paris is a place you might encounter in your dreams, yet you can go there and experience it for yourself. It’s the Loire Valley, known as the garden of France, a peaceful paradise of rolling hills covered by vineyards, fairytale castles, and charming, vibrant towns. So much awaits you to discover, eat, drink, and enjoy in the Loire River Valley. This easy-to-read guide will give you the inside scoop on a stunning variety of activities and adventures for all interests, from castle-hopping to biking or camping to vineyard tours and more. Sample itineraries and practical details will help you plan your unforgettable trip to the French Garden.
Entertaining at home in gracious French style. Born from her experience of everyday living in France, Sharon Santoni reveals the gracious, easy French way of entertaining guests at her countryside home, year-round. Personal stories evoke the spirit of the French lifestyle, while gorgeous photos make us feel right at home. Santoni creates lush bouquets from her garden and utilizes resources from surrounding nature to lay gorgeous tables both indoors and outdoors. Venues range from a Sunday morning breakfast on the patio, to a ladies lunch in her lush garden, a formal dinner in her dining room, and a picnic by the river. Santoni also shares 15 favorite recipes utilizing seasonal foods. Find inspiration for your tables throughout the seasons, and discover the simple pleasure of entertaining friends and family. Sharon Santoni writes the popular blog My French Country Home. She is the author of My Stylish French Girlfriends (Gibbs Smith). She resides in Normandy, France.
This is not a book about French Gardens. It is the story of a man travelling round France visiting a few selected French gardens on the way. Owners, intrigues, affairs, marriages, feuds, thwarted ambitions and desires, the largely unnamed ordinary gardeners, wars, plots and natural disasters run through every garden older than a generation or two and fill every corner of the grander historical ones. Families marry. Gardeners are poached. Political allegiances forged and shattered. The human trail crosses from garden to garden. They sit in their surrounding landscape, not as isolated islands but attached umbilically to it, sharing the geology, the weather, food, climate, local folklore, accent and cultural identity. Wines must be drunk and food tasted. Recipes found and compared. The perfect tarte-tartin pursued. None of these things can be ignored or separated from the shape and size of parterre, fountain, herbaceous border or pottager. So this is a book filled with stories and information, some of it about French gardens and gardening, but most of it about what makes France unlike anywhere else. From historical gardens like Versailles,Vaux le Vicomte and Courances to the kitchen gardens of the Michelin chef Alain Passard. There will be grand potagers like Villandry and La Prieure D'Orsan and allotments and back gardens spotted on the way. Monty also celebrates the obvious French associations of food and wine and finds gardens dedicated to vegetables, herbs and fruit. It is a book that any visitor to France, whether gardeners or not, will want to read both as a guide and an inspiration. It is a portal to get under the French cultural skin and to understand the country, in all its huge variety and disparity, a little better.
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An “eccentric and charming” love letter to Versailles Palace and its storied grounds, by the man who knows them best—for gardening lovers and Francophiles (New York Times) Tour Versailles’ 2,100 acres as its gardener-in-chief describes its fascinating history and his 40 years of living and working in the gardens. In Alain Baraton’s Versailles, every grove tells a story. As the gardener-in-chief, Baraton lives on its grounds, and since 1982 he has devoted his life to the gardens, orchards, and fields that were loved by France’s kings and queens as much as the palace itself. His memoir captures the essence of the connection between gardeners and the earth they tend, no matter how humble or grand. With the charm of a natural storyteller, Baraton weaves his own path as a gardener with the life of the Versailles grounds, and his role overseeing its team of 80 gardeners tending to 350,000 trees and 30 miles of walkways across 2,100 acres. He richly evokes this legendary place and the history it has witnessed but also its quieter side that he feels privileged to know: The same gardens that hosted the lavish lawn parties of Louis XIV and the momentous meeting between Marie Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan remain enchanted—private places where visitors try to get themselves locked in at night, lovers go looking for secluded hideaways, and elegant grandmothers secretly make cuttings to take back to their own gardens. A tremendous bestseller in France, The Gardener of Versailles gives an unprecedentedly intimate view of one of the grandest places on earth.
“Get ready for a beauty overload. It’s food for the soul, it’s a book of dreams and details, of flowers so perfect you want to hug them to you.” —Carla Coulson, author of Paris Tango Paris—City of Love, City of Light, City of Flowers. From elegant floral boutiques to lively flower markets to glorious blooming trees and expansive public gardens, flowers are the essential ingredient to the lush sensory bouquet that is Parisian life. With beautiful photography, Paris in Bloom transports readers on a stunning floral tour of the city, and provides recommendations to the best flower markets and a detailed guide to spring blooms. Timeless in content, Paris in Bloom is a book for Paris lovers to savor again and again, one to keep on the nightstand to conjure fond memories of their first visit and inspire dreams of the next. “Brilliantly captures the splendor of French fleurs with lush photographs and elegant prose . . . A masterpiece!” —Laura Dowling, former chief floral designer at the White House “I don’t know how Georgianna does it. She manages to make Paris, already the most beautiful city in the world, appear even more charming, more elegant and more beautiful than it already is . . . Paris in Bloom is filled with a veritable carpet of pinks and whites, pastels and green portraits that make me let out an audible sigh of joy. This book can re-inspire you to believe that yes, life really is quite beautiful.” —Doni Belau, author of Paris Cocktails “Destined to become a classic of its type, Paris in Bloom is Georgianna Lane’s love letter to Paris and to flowers.”—Gray Levett, editor of Nikon Owner magazine
If you’re tired of summer crowds in Paris, you may want to travel France differently. With a road trip! If you’re tired of summer crowds in Paris, standing 10-deep to see the Mona Lisa, waiting in long lines at the Eiffel Tower, think of traveling in France differently. With a road trip! Discover the amazing variety France offers as you hit the open highways. In this book, you’ll find 9 done-for-you road trip itineraries to give you a framework for your own road trip in some of the most gorgeous regions in the country. Hit the highways or smaller scenic roads . . . you’re the boss when you take the wheel and take a road trip through France! Discover how great hitting the road can be! Another helpful travel guide from Oliver’s France. The helpful information you need, not everything you don’t need!
For your trip to France, you might plan to take a phrase book. Let’s be honest: How likely are you to roll out a French phrase when you need one? Will you pronounce it correctly? Wouldn’t you rather speak Real French? With a bit of regular effort, you can learn the basics of French and this will greatly enrich your travels. If you plan to visit France more than once, it’s even more important to grasp basic travel French. It isn’t as difficult as you think. Let this book take you from zero to the past tense in basic travel French. This book provides clear explanations and examples along with realistic dialogues to take you one step at a time. Mastery exercises (with answer key as well as a downloadable PDF) will get you speaking Real French before you know it. Speak Real French during your trip and after. Real French is also available as an online course, a perfect companion for this book! Go ahead… before you pack your suitcase, invest in your trip to France, with REAL French.
Learn how to create a lovely French garden and then create delicious dishes with your produce using this easy-to-use French cookbook. In this sumptuous volume, the American master of edible landscaping looks at French vegetables and variations on the traditional French parterre garden, in which edibles are grown right along with flowers in formal settings. This book is a must-have for any gardener interested in the flavors of France. The "Resources" section gives you sources for all you'll need to put in your own French garden. Along with a fascinating history and tour of French gardens, Creasy introduces "cut-and-come-again and other harvesting methods used in France. Along with French gardening techniques the many featured recipes include: Roasted Garlic Spread Cream of Carrot Top Soup Leek and Potato Soup with Sorrel Leeks in Vinaigrette Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce Braised Lettuce with Lemon Thyme And many more!
