Gardens of the French Riviera
From Languedoc to the Côte d’Azur: A photo essay
“You have to forget about flowers in summer. We focus on foliage and the diversity of texture and scent … You have to consider the garden as a sculpture, not a painting.” — Olivier Filippi.
Story and photographs by David Laws
In May 2025, I joined a tour of the gardens of southern France sponsored by Pacific Horticulture. Led by knowledgeable and thoughtful Paris-based garden guide Amy Kupec Larue, we travelled from the windswept, western province of Languedoc to the steep, terraced slopes of the Côte d’Azur. The following images offer a glimpse of the variety of demonstration, municipal, private, and non-profit gardens and nurseries landscaped with local natives and species from the world’s Mediterranean climate regions that enhance this legendary coastline.
Le Jardin Sec, Pépinière Filippi, Loupian
Olivier Filippi, owner of Le Jardin Sec, is an advocate for promoting sustainable gardening practices in dry climates. His design philosophy embodies the natural beauty and resilience of the dry landscape. He encourages gardeners to work with, rather than against, drought conditions by emphasizing the importance of understanding local soil and climate conditions. By choosing local native and drought-tolerant species, as well as gardening techniques, it’s possible to cultivate thriving gardens without the need for irrigation, fertilizers, or chemicals.
Created with his wife, Clara, their private garden at the rear of the nursery property establishes visual diversity through a series of undulating mounds of Mediterranean region plants punctuated by groups of towering Italian cypress.
Le Jardin Antique Méditerranéen, Balaruc-les-Bains
Le Jardin Antique Méditerranéen presents the plantings and style of a Roman villa rustica garden of 2000 years ago. A series of terraces with winding paths lead uphill to a spring-fed reservoir that dribbles water into a trough lined with aquatic plants. Vines and roses draped over an arched colonnade offer welcome shade from the day's heat.
Le Jardin Champêtre, Caunes-Minervois
Tall trees and a fast-running creek bound Le Jardin Champêtre demonstration garden and nursery. Created by English horticulturists Imogen Checkettes and Kate Dumbleton, it utilizes extensive gravel mulching to reduce weed seed germination and maintain a cool, moist soil environment in a warm, inland valley setting. Inspired by the local garrigue landscape and regional impressionist painters, the plantings feature colorful perennials, ornamental grasses, bulbs, and ground covers.
Le Jardin de Saint Adrien, Herault
Daniel Malgouyres and his wife, Françoise, developed their garden on the site of a former basalt quarry. Their creation was recognized as a “Jardin Remarquable” by the French Ministry of Culture and was chosen as the Jardin préféré des Français for 2013.
Malgouyres’s conviction for murdering an intruder in a 2017 plot to intimidate his wife during their divorce proceedings attracted nationwide attention and still casts a shadow of notoriety over the otherwise idyllic landscape of ponds, cascades, and rugged outcrops.
Le Jardin des Plantes, Université Montpellier
Established in 1626, Le Jardin des Plantes botanical garden is one of the oldest of its kind in the world. Under the Department of Medicine at Montpellier University, it continues to serve as a hub of scientific research, education, and conservation, as well as a green public space in the center of the city.
Château de Flaugergues, Montpellier
Built in 1696 as a folie, a second home for wealthy people in the countryside, today the Château de Flaugergues lies in the heart of the city, where its multiple gardens are enjoyed as an urban oasis. A classic French boxwood parterre garden with fountains and Florentine cypresses is a relatively recent addition, while an exotic bamboo grove dates from the 1850s.
Domaine du Rayol, Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer
Managed by the Domaine du Rayol non-profit association and designed by landscape architect Gilles Clément, Les Jardins des Méditerranées showcase species from the world's Mediterranean climate regions across 50 acres of a rugged coastal slope densely covered with broad-leaved evergreen shrubs and small trees of the maquis.
La Mouissone, Grasse
La Mouissone is a steeply terraced garden in a historic olive grove, 1,300 feet above sea level, overlooking the hills to the ocean at Cannes and Antibes. Purchased by the English Lockett family in 1988, under the guidance of Lady Lockett, the restored ancient stone walls provide vertical separation between areas planted with bamboo, prairie, citrus, and kitchen gardens, as well as a spring meadow.
City of Grasse Annual Rose Festival
The annual festival weekend transforms alleyways, squares, gardens, and historic buildings of Grasse into a celebration of the rose. Exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations, screenings, and concerts are held throughout the city, which is known as “the world's perfume capital.”
Ville de Nice Jardin Botanique
A municipal park, with a panoramic view over the Bay of Angels, the garden features more than 3,000 species of plants from the Mediterranean regions of the world. The rich collection, noted for its variety of sage and agave species, is clearly labeled and conveniently organized by geographical area, but like other municipal properties, it suffers due to a lack of funding and rules that prohibit the use of volunteer labor for weeding and routine maintenance tasks.
Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild
The grand ‘Belle Époque’ Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild was built in the early 1900s on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean. The villa and French garden, featuring a linear pool and fountains, is surrounded by themed areas dedicated to Florentine, Japanese, Provençal, Spanish, exotic, rose, and stone gardens.
Les Colombières, Menton
Designed by artist and writer Ferdinand Bac in the early 20th century and restored by Margaret and Michael Likierman beginning in 1995, Les Colombières is a Moorish-inspired house and garden overlooking the ocean. Paths and stone stairways connecting multiple garden rooms are lined with Tuscan oil pots, and shaded by venerable cypress and olive trees, as well as a six-hundred-year-old carob tree.
Les Clos du Peyronnet, Mentoi
This garden, situated around a Belle Epoque villa on a steeply terraced olive grove, has been developed over the course of a century by members of the Waterfield family, most recently by the late noted English plantsman William Waterfield. A sequence of reflecting pools cascades under dense tree cover down five terraces to a peek view of the ocean. A collection of over 300 species of bulbs is housed in a garden of raised pots.
Serre de la Madone, Menton
Lawrence Johnson, designer of Hidcote Manor garden in England, traveled the world collecting plants, with a particular focus on subtropical regions, including South Africa. He purchased the farmhouse and olive grove of Serre de la Madone in 1924 and used many of his finds to transform the hot, dry slope into a series of intimate spaces defined by pergolas, water features, and stone walls and steps. The garden fell into disarray after Johnson’s death in 1958. A restoration program by the current owner, the Conservatoire du Littoral, is underway.
Vallon du Brec, Coursegoules
Photographer Yan and painter Jean Grisot created the garden at Vallon du Brec in 1992. Located on ancient farming terraces at 3,300 feet in rugged limestone country 25 miles inland from Nice, steep stairways lined with trees and shrubs from China, Japan, and North America provide access to a pond, Grisot’s bridge, and other wooden sculptural structures.
Domain de l’Orangerie, Antibes
Landscape designer James Basson and gardener Kevin Creed have transformed Domain de l’Orangerie, a private, formerly heavily irrigated lawn terrace, into a sand and gravel-mulched dry garden featuring Mediterranean basin plants. The pathway to a kitchen garden and wildflower meadow is lined with thousand-year-old olive trees, their gnarled trunks entwined with climbing roses.
About the Tour
The Pacific Horticulture-sponsored tour, “Provence, Côte d’Azur and Beyond,” from May 5 to 13, 2025, was facilitated by Shannon Cummings-Lee of Sterling Tours, Escondido, California. Our guide was Paris-based Amy Kupec Larue. Linda McKendry was the Pacific Horticulture escort.
