Find the quiet.

Monday garden- part 2.

One of the reasons I’ve decided on the lesser known Parisian gardens as the subject of my residency ( The Escape. - by Dacha’s Notes From A Balcony (substack.com) and you will find the original idea on

Amy Stewart

Substack)- is that they offer respite from the noise and the tension of urban life. In these essays I’d like to take you by the hand (metaphorically speaking) and lead you to these places of quiet and maybe you’ll welcome this pause. It’s ok to just stop for a while.

One of the places I’d like to take you to is Parc Floral, in the 12^th Arrondissement. It could be a place of a self-appointed residency all by itself.  The Parc hosts almost all of the species of plants and flowers that are needed  (more than 3 million specimens of which are planted every year) to decorate the capital. They range from mosses and ferns, to bonsai and azaleas, with tulips (200 varieties) and irises in between. It’s a lesser known place- even though there are quite a few people there on weekends mostly families, due to a children’s playground that is situated at the very end of the parc. There are concerts, a puppet theatre, exhibitions…So if you are seeking quiet, it’s better to come on a week day and mornings are especially magical.

This is what I did last Monday- it was time to go and see the dahlias. It has rained heavily the day before and in the early morning, before I set off, a shower has for a while blurred everything outside. But when I arrived in the Parc, the sun has come up from behind the clouds. The first to greet me were the tall oaks. Standing under them I heard regular dry sounds of acorns falling on the ground. As if someone high up in the branches was trying to drum out a melody. A soft magpie feather floated down. Nature was settling into a slower rhythm and was giving me more time to look, to observe and to think. Summer with its bright colours, a sometimes excessive familiarity and the loud beat of: “ Enjoy- enjoy- enjoy me” has let go and a -closer to my heart- coolness was settling in.

There was almost no one on the pathways, except for the gardeners and I walked slowly among the ferns, towards the pines. I stopped to look at the late blooming roses. There is a particular beauty to them, the petals pale yellow, colour of old lace or deep red in the softer autumnal light.

And then it was time to meet the dahlias. Sometimes you want to simply post photos of a garden because it feels like there aren’t enough words to describe the beauty of it.  This is how I felt last Monday, as I stood there, surrounded by the deep reds, silky oranges and spiky bright yellow petals. But a photo can’t capture how the light keeps changing: the sun illuminating the petals, each one standing out clearly, then softening into the shadow, when a cloud passes.

A video then… But what about the smell of the earth after the heavy rain or the caressing warmth of the sun on my skin, unexpected and fleeting, yet so welcome? What about that bittersweet feeling of noticing a bee weighted down by droplets of water- forever asleep in the centre of a fluttering flower?

I come back to the words- to stringing them like beads, one after another: an ancient way of capturing what seems forever fleeting: the light, the seasons, the emotions. Autumn calls to that part of us, a deep, centuries old part. We stretch out our hands, trying to hold the floating mist that are our lives in the  brush strokes or typed out signs. Autumn gives us space, more time, more quiet: we try, we read over what we wrote, we sigh, we begin again…The steam rises from the mug, outside a rusty leaf floats down. There is time- the urgency of summer has passed.

And so I begin again, trying to capture the fragile silky beauty of ruby and bronze coloured petals on the ground…