Nantes Parks – Parc de Procé

« Nantes : peut-être avec Paris la seule ville de France où j’ai l’impression que peut m’arriver quelque chose qui en vaut la peine … où un esprit d’aventure au-delà de toutes les aventures habite encore certains êtres, Nantes, d’où peuvent encore me venir des amis, Nantes où j’ai aimé un parc : le parc de Procé. » André Breton, 1928

“Nantes: perhaps with Paris the only city in France where I have the impression that something worthwhile can happen to me … where for me the pace of life is not the same as elsewhere, where a spirit of adventure beyond all adventures still lives in some people, Nantes, where friends can still come to me, Nantes where I liked a park: Procé Park. ” André Breton, 1928

Parc de Procé has been appreciated by many people including Andre Breton, quoted on a plaque outside on the terrace café wall. Like most gardens in France they are entered by tall wrought iron gates and a café is housed in the old manor. Time doesn’t matter as we eat gelato and chat on the terrace looking down on the front park and fountain through the gnarled branches of the very old and well pruned crepe murtle trees. Pruning is an art form in France where ever it occurs and I imagine taken for granted a little by the French, but to me the shapes are a key to recalling and respecting formalities of times past. A large Dahlia collection is secreted far away in the top corner of the gardens and comes as a surprise like many things. The species are all labelled and can be easily perused from markers along the stone mosaic paths. A traditional rotunda, mint green sits playfully among the flowers.

Most of Procé’s (Wikipedia) park occupies the northern slopes of the Chézine valley, a tributary of the Loire . The river enters the park in the south-west under the Jules-César bridge and travels 200 metres south-east, feeding two small ponds before passing under the street of Dervallières; The space is mainly covered with lawns accessible to visitors, making it a popular place to walk.

The park’s manor house was built in the late 18th century. It was rebuilt around 1830 by Marion de Procé, owner and mayor of Saint-Père-en-Retz. His heirs later sold it to Gustave Caillé, a shipowner and wood merchant. The latter completely reorganized the park in 1866 according to the plans of the landscape architect Dominique Noisette (nephew of Louis Claude Noisette) and gives it its current appearance. His children, the poet, scholar and lawyer from Nantes Dominique Caillé, priest Charles Caillé and Arthur Écomard and wife of the mayor of Carquefou, sell the park to the city of Nantes in 1912 then led by Paul Bellamy, close friend of Arthur Écomard, at a symbolic price of 320,000 francs in order that it could be preserved. For the city of Nantes, this completed to the west of the city a set of large public green spaces.

During the First World War, part of the estate’s land was used by the town hall to remedy the food shortage. Plots were planted with potatoes and this operation, also carried out in the park of Grand-Blottereau , was successful due to the employment of German prisoners of war with the harvest reaching 137 tons. Moreover, facilities made available to sports companies were set up in the upper part of the park and the stage of Procé was inaugurated on May 4, 1919. They are supplemented by tribunes, inaugurated in 1936 and a track for athletics was created after the Second World War.

In 1929, the municipality planned to transform the part of the Chézine valley downstream of the park into a vast promenade leading to the Canclaux square. Most of the expropriations were implemented but the project was abandoned as a result of the change of the municipal team. However, from 1941, towards the south-east towards the place Paul-Doumer, a part of the acquired grounds made it possible to build a school stage and a garden for children (current kindergarten of the park of Procé ). The latter later receives the basin which was previously in the center of the Place Duchesse-Anne and hosted the statuary ” Bathers “, moved in the late 1920s during the work of diverting the Erdre.

In 1941, the municipality led by Auguste Pageot acquired four statues from the Palais du Trocadero in Paris, demolished in 1935 to make way for the Palais de Chaillot . They are installed in the upper part of the park. At the same time, the three sculptures are received and erected near the bridge Jules-Cesar, vestiges of the old municipal fishmonger. The building originally had four statues but the last one, representing the Erdre or Boulogne, disappeared during its demolition.

In 1995, Procé Park received its kiosk from the old Piou salons, after restoration. It’s a kiosk whose life was hectic. Built in the park of Château du Vivier in Saint-Joseph de Porterie, it joined in 1936 the district of Batignoles after the destruction of the castle. For 50 years it was the emblem of the Piou fairs (now Boulevard Jules-Verne), a community meeting place.

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Google Maps – Parc de Procé

Nantes Parks – Parc de la Gaudinière

In this wooded park, chestnut trees and centuries-old oaks rub shoulders with the exotic trees introduced in the 19th century. The park is also an exotic mountain walk in the hollow of the shady valley of the Patouillerie.

Former property of a Chaurand family the landscape design of this site dates back to the nineteenth century. It was remodeled in its upper part in the 1990s. Today, it reflects an image of the mountain and exudes such a natural atmosphere that exotic trees present, bald cypress, Douglas fir, redwoods, red oaks of America all appear to belong to the native flora.

The 30 000 bulbous plants scattered in the lawns offer a spring show at the end of March, extended by the flowering rhododendrons (collection of 1500 plants in 110 varieties) and that of perennials. In the hollow of the shaded valley, in the alpine rock sit Narcissus bulbs, crocuses and anemones. They are today the original signature of this par

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Google Maps – Parc de La Gaudinière

Vertou

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Google Maps – Vertou

Nantes Parks – Parc de la Morinière

I won’t ever forget the exhilaration during my first Summer in France as I discovered the manor and its Japanese garden reached via a park which shared an overgrown boundary with the rear of our garden. I came to it unexpectedly under the huge Japanese elm at the end of three kilometers of cow paddocks and shady riverbank paths, somewhere between lazy suburbia and heaven. The soft shadows of the glades give way to remnants of an industrial past. We sat and ate cake from an old painted cake tin and I knew there and then, I was in France.

History

In 1972 Rezé City bought the Morinière Park, in order to preserve the green areas. Today, it is the second historic park of Rezé.

In the park of Morinière on the edge of the Sèvre, the brick chimney testifies to the industrial past of the site- powder deposit, fertilizer factory, palm oil production in the eighteenth century. Industrial plants follow one another on the site of Morinière. With the Sèvre two steps away and Port Morinière, now Léon-Sécher wharf, the transportation of industrial products by boat was easy.

In the middle of the 19th century the site was purchased by Henri Suzer who transformed Morinière tannery and the factory manufactured gaiters for the army. The war of 1870 signified a golden age of the tannery and the factory thrived employing nearly a thousand people on two sites, Morinière and the Isle of Versailles. Henri Suzer took the opportunity to build the manor, which he called “Le petit Choisy sur Sèvre”.

At the death of Henri Suzer, his son took responsibility for the factory but activity was slow and the factory was sold in 1894. The Society of Chemicals, Nantes took over with its manufacture of “blues” used to treat gold ores and in 1905 an explosion discharged toxic waste into the Sèvre, which colored the rock in blue, hence the name, the blue path. After the First World War, the factory no longer was in operation but the manor remained inhabited.

In 1972, the city bought four hectares of the site, the manor and the buildings for 800 000 F. If the manor was in a good state, the industrial buildings were dilapidated. The chimney stamped “SN” sits in the middle of the plants. It is not so much the manor as the ground which interests Rezé. At the time, the only park in the town was the Carterie, in the district Pont-Rousseau. It was therefore a policy of preservation of green areas and development of relaxation areas that pushed the city to acquire the Morinière.

The land was converted into a park, the old tannery into a reception center for foreign delegations and the manor ground floor used as an exhibition space in the Summer months.

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Google Maps – Parc de la Morinière

Nantes Parks – Sèvre Nantaise

The Sèvre Nantaise is a river in western France, a left-bank tributary to the Loire. Its total length is 142 km. Its source is in the Deux-Sèvres département, near Secondigny.

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Google Maps – Sèvre Nantaise

Roseraie in Spring and Autumn

September 29, 2017March 14, 2018

Grand old gardens seem to assert the outer borders of Nantes in each direction but it is to the North that is located a roseraie for all seasons with ample flowering year round, baroque old roses in the warmer months aside hardy new roses which still flower in the cold months. One could live in Nantes for this garden alone.

Nantes Roseraie in Autumn

Nantes Roseraie in Spring

Fontevraud-l’Abbaye – History

HISTORY

The following is from Wikipedia

Founder

Robert of Arbrissel had served as the Archpriest of the Diocese of Rennes, carrying out the reformist agenda of its bishop. When the bishop died in 1095, Robert was driven out of the diocese due to the hostility of the local clergy. He then became a hermit in the forest of Craon, where he practiced a life of severe penance, together with a number of other men who went on to found major monastic institutions. His eloquence and asceticism attracted many followers, for whom in 1096 he founded a monastery of canons regular at La Roë, of which he was the first abbot. In that same year Pope Urban II summoned him to Angers and appointed him an apostolic missionary, authorizing him to preach anywhere. His preaching drew large crowds of devoted followers, both men and women, even lepers. As a result, many men wished to embrace the religious life, whom he sent to his abbey. When the canons of that house objected to the influx of candidates of lower social states, he resigned his office and left the community.

Fontevraud

Around 1100 Robert and his followers settled in a valley called Fons Ebraldi where he established a monastic community. Initially the men and women lived together in the same house, in an ancient ascetic practice called Syneisaktism. This practice had been widely condemned by Church authorities, however, and under pressure the community soon segregated according to gender, with the monks living in small priories where they lived in community in service to the nuns and under their rule. They were recognized as a religious community in 1106, both by the Bishop of Angers and by Pope Paschal II. Robert, who soon resumed his life of itinerant preaching, appointed Hersende of Champagné to lead the community. Later her assistant, Petronilla of Chemillé, was elected as the first abbess in 1115.

Robert wrote a brief Rule of Life for the community, based upon the Rule of St. Benedict. Unlike the other monastic orders characterized by double monasteries, the monks and nuns of the Order of Fontevrault followed the same Rule. In his Rule, Robert dealt with four principal points: silence, good works, food and clothing, encouraging the utmost in simplicity of life and dress. He directed that the abbess should never be chosen from among those who had been brought up at Fontevrault, but that she should be someone who had had experience of the world (de conversis sororibus). This latter injunction was observed only in the case of the first two abbesses and was canceled by Pope Innocent III in 1201. At the time of Robert’s death in 1117, there were about 3,000 nuns in the community.

In the early years the Plantagenets were great benefactors of the abbey and while Isabella d’Anjou was the abbess, King Henry II’s widow, Eleanor of Aquitaine, made the abbey her place of residence. Abbess Louise de Bourbon left her crest on many of the alterations to the abbey building which she made during her term of office.

Tomb of Richard I of England (front) and Isabella of Angoulême (back)

Decline

With the passing of the Plantagenet dynasty, however, Fontevrault and her dependencies began to fall upon hard times. At the end of the 12th century, the Abbess of Fontevrault, Matilda of Flanders (1189-1194), complained about the extreme poverty which the abbey was suffering. As a result, in 1247 the nuns were permitted to receive inheritances to provide income for their needs, contrary to monastic custom. The fragile economic basis of the Order was exacerbated by the devastation of the Hundred Years War, which lasted throughout the 14th century. A canonical visitation of fifty of the priories of the Order in 1460 showed most of them to be barely occupied, if not abandoned.

Abbess Louise Françoise de Rochechouart (1664-1742)

Abbess Gabrielle de Rochechouart (1645-1704)

Suppression

The Order was dispersed during the French Revolution. In November 1789, all property of the Catholic Church was declared to be the property of the nation. On 17 August 1792, a Revolutionary decree ordered evacuation of all monasteries, to be completed by 1 October 1792. At that time, there were still some 200 nuns and a small community of monks in residence at Fontevraud. The last abbess, Julie Sophie Charlotte de Pardaillan d’Antin, is said to have died in poverty in Paris in 1797. The abbey later became a prison from 1804 to 1963, when it was given to the French Ministry of Culture.

The projected prison in the former abbey was planned to hold 1,000 prisoners, and required major changes, including new barracks in addition to the transformation of monastic buildings into dormitories, workshops, and common areas. Prisoners–-men, women and children-–began arriving in 1814. Eventually, it held some 2,000 prisoners, earning the prison the reputation of being the “toughest in France after Clairvaux”. Political prisoners experienced the harshest conditions: some French Resistance prisoners were shot there under the Vichy Government. Following the closing of the prison came a major restoration, and opening to the public in 1985, with completion of the abbey church’s restoration in 2006 under architect Lucien Magne.

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Fontevraud-l’Abbaye – L’Abbaye Grounds

The Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud or Fontevrault (in French: abbaye de Fontevraud) was a monastery in the village of Fontevraud-l’Abbaye, near Chinon, in Anjou, France. It was founded in 1101 by the itinerant preacher Robert of Arbrissel. The foundation flourished and became the center of a new monastic Order, the Order of Fontevrault. This order was composed of double monasteries, in which the community consisted of both men and women—in separate quarters of the abbey—all of which were subject to the authority of the Abbess of Fontevraud. The Abbey of Fontevraud itself consisted of four separate communities, all completely managed by the same abbess.

The first permanent structures were built between 1110 and 1119.[1] The area where the Abbey is located was then part of what is sometimes referred to as the Angevin Empire. The King of England, Henry II, his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and son, King Richard the Lionheart were all buried here at the end of the 12th century. It was disestablished as a monastery during the French Revolution.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is situated in the Loire Valley between Chalonnes-sur-Loire and Sully-sur-Loire within the Loire-Anjou-Touraine French regional natural park (Parc naturel régional Loire-Anjou-Touraine).

The complex of monastic buildings served as a prison from 1804 to 1963. Since 1975, it has hosted a cultural centre, the Centre Culturel de l’Ouest.