Welcome
to Eden
The fragrant, sensual, simply magical paradise of Jean Mus.
By
Romy de Courtay
A broad sweep of Florentine cypresses leads from the
swimming pool toward the sea at the Villa Fiorentina
garden, designed by Mus.
A Mus garden in Grasse, France: Under the protection
of a Mediterranean hackberry tree, ponds of different
heights flow into the main canal, which surrounds a
collection of citrus trees.
To
walk through a garden designed by world-known landscape designer
Jean Mus is to enter a dreamworld. The purple waves of a lavender
field rippling in the breeze, the intoxicating scent of an
orange tree in bloom, the bubbling sound of a waterfall tumbling
from a cliff, the grace and power of a row of cypresses soaring
to the sky engage the senses and kindle emotion. “An
ideal garden is two things in one: nature and paradise,”
says Mus, whose new book, Mediterranean Gardens (written
with Dane McDowell and photographed by Vincent Motte; éditions
Flammarion distributed by Rizzoli International Publishing;
January 2006; $45), features 20 such gems. “In the notion
of dream, paradise is a garden.”
The son of the head gardener at the Villa Croisset in Grasse,
a chic Riviera enclave favored by royalty, aristocrats and
industrialists, Mus grew up in a garden designed by famed
landscape designer and former socialite Ferdinand Bac, the
illegitimate grandson of Jerôme Napoléon. “I
spent my childhood in the refined beauty and elegance of gardens
and people,” he recounts. “For the son of a gardener,
to be born under such circumstances was an exceptional gift.”
And while his parents hoped that he would engage in brilliant
engineering studies, “I could do nothing else than live
night and day in the world of gardens.”
After earning his horticultural degree from the National Institute
of Landscape Design in Versailles, Mus worked for 15 years
with the Schneider Sisters – Cannes-based landscape
designers – before launching out on his own. To date,
he has designed more than 1,200 gardens, drawing inspiration
from the timeless features of the region in which he was born:
the wind, his “accomplice,” which shapes vegetation
and determines scales and attitude; the scents of morning
and evening, “which you can smell on our skin”;
the play of light and shade from the cloud banks drifting
across the bright blue sky; and the shades of green, gray,
blue and white visible all around. “Every day, I remain
a son of the olive tree and of the Mediterranean,” he
says. “I bring to my work some of the fragrance of the
Riviera and a need to share a place that symbolizes happiness
for me.”
Raised in Bac’s shadow, Mus has embraced the latter’s
theatrical quality. “What I admire in [his] gardens
are their audacity, their freedom and their combination of
lavish décor and quiet normalcy,” he states in
his book. “It is through him that I came to understand
that beauty is to be found not in opulence, but in simplicity.”
As for British landscape designer Russell Page, whom he once
met at Villa Croisset, “he made me discover refinement,
nuance and sensuality in a garden,” he says.
When embarking on a project, Mus works closely with the property
owners and meets with the architect, interior designer, gardener
and cook (he always creates at least one herb garden). In
addition to a planting list, he includes plans for leveling
the work site, civil engineering, lighting, irrigation, construction
work and metalwork. “In 200 years, the definition of
the landscape architect as painter, poet, architect and gardener
has changed,” he muses. “Today, you need management
and coaching skills and the ability to synthesize new methods.
Garden design has become a team job.” Once a “soloist,”
Mus now has ten assistants.
When restoring the famed gardens of the Villa Fiorentina,
a protected landmark in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat originally designed
by Bac, Mus strove to preserve and update the initial design
of the site according to strict recommendations by the French
Ministry of Culture while imbuing it with the technical specificities
and design qualities of the 21st century (2,000 lights now
dot the garden, dramatizing an incredible collection of sculptures,
including Rodin’s Balzac). “We had to perform
feats of prowess to preserve the existing structure,”
he recounts. “It took two-and-a-half years to cover
just two hectares, drawing on the exceptional quality and
know-how of the best workmen and artisans. There was truly
a noble aspect to the work.”
The Moorish arch at the head of a canal evocative of the Alhambra,
the Chinese pavilion, the reworked perspective of the Italianate
cypress-lined royal avenue whose vast grass-covered steps
lead down to the sea, the Provençal maquis (scrub)
ascending to the hilltop Belvedere and the tropical garden
reached by a narrow bamboo-lined path evoke a theme dear to
the world traveler, that of the journey.
“You enter a landscape and inside is a garden,”
says the landscape architect, who has left his imprint from
Portugal, Italy and Spain to Saudi Arabia, India, Morocco
and northern California. On a rocky peninsula near Mycenae
in Greece, he fashioned an enchanting village from arid stone
and sunburned shrub. “This was a meeting between two
children of the Mediterranean,” recounts Mus. “I
had to recreate with the owner (a shipowner) the heritage
of his childhood, the lifestyle, perfumes and shapes of the
Peloponnesus. He made me discover and share Greece. I brought
him the Riviera, which 2,000 years earlier had received the
influence of Greece.”
While the shipowner built an entire village complete with
a town hall, Greek Orthodox chapel, taverna, private port,
village square, chicken coop and hairy donkeys, Mus gave life
to the barrenness – creating fields of sunflowers, lavender,
rosemary and vines around the property, planting mulberry,
fig, pomegranate and cypress trees around the village square
and overseeing the transplant from farther down in the Peloponnesus
of 500 millennial olive trees symbolizing peace, honor and
glory. (“It would be the most beautiful thing if I had
my ashes at the foot of a millennial olive tree,” he
sighs.) A solitary Aleppo pine, gnarled and bent by the fierce
Meltemi wind, dominates a white-sand cove.
Authenticity (“That’s very Greek!” was the
owner’s mantra) and respect of the region’s climate
were paramount, since Mus does not believe in imposing his
design on nature. “Do not disturb and do not provoke,”
he warns. “Any place can become magical and heavenly
with measure and humility.”
“I was born under a lucky star,” says this child
of the Mediterranean, flashing his characteristic broad smile.
“I was meant to enter the order of gardeners.”
Romy
de Courtay is a Paris-based freelance fashion and lifestyle
writer whose articles have appeared in international publications
including Elle Décor, Maison & Décoration,
Town & Country, Odyssey and Elite Traveler.
