Gardens
of Creativity

(Gardening) “In the 18th century, the Rococo vocabulary drew on rocaille and the plant world; in the 19th, William Morris’s motifs blossomed from his gardens, from the espaliered rose at Red House to the thrushes at Kelmscott Manor. Fashion does not merely copy nature: it stylizes it, distills forms, and converts them into a language.” Alexandra Harwood stands well placed to comment; as a fashion historian and analyst, she is attuned to the quiet currents of pattern, inheritance, and influence. “At Dior, nature structures the brand’s visual language. At Chanel, the camellia asserts itself as a distinctive emblem, far beyond the decorative register,” she explains.

Today, as fashion houses move past the mere cult of the object towards a holistic lifestyle and luxury hospitality, this role expands from a visual and symbolic repertoire to a fully multisensory experience. In Florence, the Gucci Garden—a blend of museum, restaurant, and shop—perfectly illustrates this evolution: “While the term ‘garden’ does not refer to a botanical garden, it immerses visitors in a cultural environment that is both immersive and narrative, rather than purely commercial,” says Harwood.

In the fields of beauty, skincare and perfumery, the garden is no longer merely depicted but functions as a laboratory for applied research: plants are cultivated, tested, and provide a source of active ingredients, all within frameworks of traceability and sustainable innovation. “Long centered on the workshop and the artisan’s craft, contemporary luxury now seeks to reveal what precedes or extends the object itself: its territory, production conditions, and cultivation cycles,” observes Harwood. “The garden gives the brand the image of a luxury that is less abstract, less detached from the earth, more deeply rooted and more grounded.”

This is a side of Christian Louboutin that is less well known: his passion for gardens, which he developed alongside his work in footwear. “Designing gardens wasn’t so different from designing shoes. It’s all about textures, colors, shadows, light, materials…” he confides. In his twenties, he worked for several houses, assisted Roger Vivier, and then created his first gardens before launching his own iconic shoe brand. “From a very early age, I was interested in plants, flowers, and trees. But nature simply didn’t move fast enough for my impatience at that age: a garden requires patience. Through them, I also learned that man cannot be master of everything, and that nature demands humility.”

Ironically, it was the Pensée (pansy) model that first featured the iconic red sole. From Louboutin’s very first collections, botanical inspiration has never been far away: “The pansies are transformed into textured velvet, bamboo leaves into iridescent leather motifs, and flowerbeds into color combinations.” A highlight is the Clovis shoe, whose plexiglass heel contains real hydrangea petals.

While his creative world now spans fashion, art, hospitality, and lifestyle, the designer is marking a “return to his roots” with the acquisition of Kerdalo Gardens. “Originally from Brittany, I first discovered them in my youth during a visit that left a lasting impression at the Kerdalo nursery, while I was creating my first garden on the island of Bréhat.”

Kerdalo is the work of Peter Wolkonsky, a Russian prince in exile and a passionate botanist, who shaped this 17-hectare landscape into a home for over 5,000 plant species. In 2021, Louboutin acquired the gardens and is now in the midst of a targeted restoration. In the face of climate change, the challenge is to make it resilient. “Each year, a number of trees and plants die from lack of water, while others succumb to storms,” he says. Working closely with his team, Louboutin is carefully evolving the garden’s practices, introducing new varieties while safeguarding the invisible thread that binds the place to its past. “It’s a wonderful canvas for experimentation, faithful to the original vision of the garden’s creator.”

At her country home near Chantilly, north of Paris, designer Cordelia de Castellane tends her flowers and vegetable garden with the same eye for detail that she brings to her collections. Once the harvest is complete, she arranges these precious treasures into enchanting table settings with the same sense of “color, nuance, and harmony” that she infuses into her designs. Alongside her day job as Artistic Director of Dior Home and Baby Dior, de Castellane has also designed the interiors of iconic hotels and restaurants, from the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay to Maxim’s, as well as Lapérouse and Ladurée.

Even with pruning shears in hand and wellies on her feet, it’s hard to imagine de Castellane finding the time for a personal project. Creating her own garden marked “the start of a great adventure, almost therapeutic,” she confides. “My garden was a childhood dream. I was afraid of making it a reality. I loved gardens, but I knew nothing about them. I had to learn everything from scratch. It taught me patience.”

From a very young age, de Castellane was surrounded by nature. “My eye and imagination were shaped in a garden,” she confides. This passion has become a cornerstone of her creative universe. Flowers, closely linked to Christian Dior’s heritage, were the couturier’s muses. The artistic director shares the same fascination for “their arrogant beauty”, which she translates into color, form, and setting with sensitivity and poetry. Some of her recent creations bear witness to this: “very raw bouquets, with their roots still attached, showcased on 18th-century-style plates—another signature of the House of Dior. I tied them with ribbon. I photographed them, then reproduced them as drawings in the studio.”

Influenced by the “studied naturalness” of English gardens, de Castellane has captured her abundant world in Flower Couture (Rizzoli, 2025), where she distils her expertise: composing with flowers, setting beautiful tables, and elevating arrangements in found vases and woven wicker baskets. The blooms that punctuate each season inspire settings for every moment—from lunch to afternoon tea, cocktails to dinner. With the passing of the year come new festivities, each expressing a vision of beauty and reflecting de Castellane’s talent for hospitality.

Viewed from the sky, Le Jardin des Partages asserts an iconic signature. At its center, a water reservoir takes the shape of a stylized heart, a nod from Tom Arthus-Bertrand, a French landscape designer, to his father, a pioneer of aerial photography whose image of the heart of Voh, a natural swathe of mangrove vegetation in the shape of a heart, was immortalized on the cover of Earth from Above and reprinted worldwide.

It is here, west of Paris in the countryside where he grew up, that Yann Arthus-Bertrand—working closely alongside his son—realized his dream: to create a haven of biodiversity. On a former farm acquired from the Guerlain family—longtime neighbors—the globetrotter has allowed 28 hectares of wilderness to flourish, much to the delight of the local wildlife, while son Tom has designed a comprehensive ornamental garden, complete with vegetable plots.

“The idea was to share a passion for the living world with my father and to show how human activity can coexist with the wild,” says Tom Arthus-Bertrand. A true testing ground, Le Jardin des Partages acts as a miniature ecosystem. Across 1.4 hectares, a mosaic of landscapes unfolds: bio-intensive market gardening, a forest garden, agroforestry, an orchard, edible and ornamental flowers, pollinator hedges—even a sensory trail.

“This garden was conceived around three key principles: beautiful, to inspire; educational, to foster learning; and productive, as food is a vital gateway to understanding our civilization,” explains Tom Arthus-Bertrand. Set on a historic site of the Guerlain family, Le Jardin des Partages builds on this heritage: the Maison—now part of the LVMH group—patrons the project, reflecting a shared commitment to preserving biodiversity and passing on knowledge.

Perched on a promontory overlooking the sea, Christian Dior’s childhood home sits on rugged, eroded cliffs where gorse, broom, and maritime pines cling on, come rain or shine. The elegant ‘fin-de-siècle’ villa is sited in Granville, a Normandy seaside resort popular with Parisians during the Belle Époque. Named Les Rhumbs in reference to the compass rose motif that reoccurs in the bow window and the garden mosaics, the house served as a matrix in shaping the couturier’s taste and the identity of his Maison. The garden and its rose beds, placed to surround the house, were created by his mother, and it was here that Dior was first introduced to the splendors of the plant world. The compass rose and also the façade’s ‘rose’ in a very soft pink, along with the grey of the gravel, remained his favorite shades.

Later, having become a couturier, Christian Dior drew his inspiration from flowers and their essences. His successors have also continued to reinterpret this formative passion. “Flowers, the rose, the corolla-shaped silhouette, a love of efflorescence, and certain jewelry creations such as Rose des Vents all serve to extend this original garden,” explains Alexandra Harwood.

While the couturier’s autobiographical garden has now become a museum, its story is being replayed some 20 km away, centered on the Rose de Granville. Inspired by the wild roses of the Normandy coast found at Les Rhumbs, this hybrid variety was bred to capture its remarkable resilience to wind, salt, and the elements, following more than a decade of research and development. A key element of Dior Prestige skincare, the rose is now cultivated in conditions close to its natural habitat, and is prized for its regenerative properties and its ability to reverse the signs of aging.

From Villa Les Rhumbs to the gardens of Normandy, the Maison’s roots, anchored in its childhood garden, move innovation forward. As Alexandra Harwood observes, “Here, the garden is not merely a storytelling device: it contributes directly to the formulation, traceability, and ecological integrity of the products.”

Fond of beautiful gardens and of Morocco, Yves Saint Laurent drew on these places of retreat to nourish his imagination; in his work, flowers took on shape in prints, appliqués, and embroidery. A lush paradise, the Majorelle Garden near Marrakesh—the fashion master’s final resting place—ranks among the most beautiful in the world. Could Saint Laurent ever have imagined that some 40 km away, at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, an oasis of greenery and biodiversity would also pay tribute to him?

Here, two hectares of arid land have been restored to fertility; more than 200 plant varieties thrive, cultivated according to the principles of regenerative agriculture. This marks a first for Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, which chose the Ourika Valley in 2013 to launch its social and environmental transition program. L’Oréal’s Luxury Division has teamed up with landscape architects Éric Ossart and Arnaud Maurières, as well as botanists, to introduce endemic species that are as rare as they are unique. Designed as an open-air laboratory, the site welcomes perfumers who come to capture the singular scent of the saffron pistil at first light.

Pomegranates and marshmallow roots for lipsticks, prickly pear flowers and jasmine for foundations, or orange blossom for Libre L’Eau Nue, the House’s first alcohol-free fragrance. “Today, each of our products contains at least one ingredient sourced from the garden,” notes Dania Blin, Global Sustainability and Sciences Director at Yves Saint Laurent Beauté. To harvest them, “we supported the creation of a women’s cooperative with an international NGO,” she explains. At the heart of the project, these women oversee the cultivation, harvesting, and drying of the plants, preserving ancestral know-how whilst gaining financial independence. A pioneering initiative in the valley, it has encouraged similar collaborations, with new cooperatives emerging across the region.

Certified organic, “the gardens are a responsible source of ingredients, contribute to a positive social impact, and provide a unique space for experimentation in the cultivation and extraction of our ingredients,” Blin adds. “In a country so dear to our founder, they continue to inspire creation.”