Discovering the Beauty of Paris: Exploring its Historic Gardens, Landscapes, and Pedestrian-Friendly Streets

Paris was established along the banks of the Seine River and is now lined with pedestrian friendly wide boulevards, seen here with majestic views from Notre-Dame cathedral out to the Eiffel Tower.

Wow, an amazingly wonderful walk under the shade of gorgeous plane trees with plenty of public seating along this wide allee on the edge of the historic Tuileries Garden.

The fountain at Tuileries Garden offering relaxing seating for putting up your feet and checking out your smartphone messages.

Outside the Petit Palais was a wonderful display of poppies, daisies, bellflowers and other wildflowers. A woderful juxtaposition of the informal planting with the formal classical architeture!

The entrance garden to the Petit Palais with a nice gravel pathway that worked, a nice bonus for permeable surfaces and stormwater management.

This rooftop plaza would have been quite barren and harsh without this small planting of Pennistum 'Little Bunny', but a perfect plant for this space with it being drought tolerant, wind firm and compact in growth.

A pleasant walk along wide boulevards and under the dappled shade of plane trees in the Montmartre area of Paris, once home to many famous artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh.

The beautiful Jardin du Luxembourg with formally laid out gardens, pools, fountains statuary trees in allees.

At the Jardin du Luxembourg an elegant statue bordered by clourful annuals as a focal point at the end of a formal lawn area.

An extremely large, well maintained and popular playground, but unfortunately there was a fee to enter, so a bit unexpected and disappointing in a public park.

Throughout Paris you will see wonderful wrought iron fences with such gorgeous details in their fence finials. Wish we could see more of these in North America.

Paris is making a massive push to expand their network of bicycle lanes. This is a beautiful example of having an attractive, well defined bicycle lane with railing on the car side and a row of trees on the pedestrian side. Wouldn't it be wonderful to bicycle along here!

A wonderful bosque of Tilia (lime) trees amongst a beutifully maintained residential area on the left bank.

A view of the world famous gardens at Palace of Versaiiles with large pools, fountains, ornately trimmed plants and grand allees. The immense scale of this garden and the great wealth needed to create and upkeep the gardens boggles the mind, and it is not difficult to understand this opulance of King Louis IV and predecessors leading to the French Revolution in 1789.

A view of clororful annuals like cleome behind a boxwood hedge creating a beautiful foreground fo the Palace of Versaiiles.

Now finally back to the everyday life of Parisiens and a modest street scene showing a nice boulevard planting providing shade and greenery plus a nice separation for pedestrians from the street.