At the age of 69, Nicole de Vésian's real adventure started. Retired from a career of designing hats and linens for Hermès, she decamped to Provence to embark on her most ambitious design project: a strange and hauntingly beautiful garden that to this day incites in anyone who sees it a sudden desire to prune shrubs into pillowy, languorous clouds.
Above: Photograph via Louisa Jones.
A mix of textures and the play of light on carefully shaped shrubbery create a peaceful, meditative space in de Vésian's garden in Bonnieux, where she moved in the early 1980s after the death of her husband.
Rather than confining boxwood to a more conventional supporting role as a hedge or as edging for flower beds, de Vésian encouraged it to become the central focus in the garden.
Above: Photograph via Garden Design.
The garden at La Louve (translation: "The She Wolf"), dilapidated when de Vésian bought it, is built on a series of terraces against a hillside.
Above: Photograph via La Dolce Vita California.
On the upper terrace, natural elements such as stone, gravel, and wood provide a backdrop for the topiaries.
Above: Photograph via Garden Design.
The swimming pool was added after de Vésian sold the property to art dealer Judith Pillsbury.
Above: Photograph by Mustafa Birgi via Flickr.
Nicole de Vésian designed benches for the garden to take advantage of the hillside views.
Above: Photograph via Garden Design.
For years, gardeners have made pilgrimages to the Luberon to see the garden; last fall we featured a western Massachusetts garden whose design was entirely inspired by La Louve. "Her private garden was like some cosmic thunderbolt. It took my breath away," says Maria Nation, who returned home from France determined to rip out her perennial beds and replace them with boxwood.
For more of Maria Nation's garden, see A Secret Garden: Beauty in the Berkshires.
Above: Photograph via Garden Design.
Interested in learning more about the technique of cloud pruning? See our earlier story, Topiary: Cloud Pruning as Arboreal Art.