On my last full day in Paris, the balloon went up. From my hotel, I could see it floating 150m above the Parc Andre Citroen, so I scrambled into my clothes and headed along the east bank of the Seine to take a ride.
The Ballon de Paris Generali is a tethered helium balloon which serves the dual purpose of monitoring air quality in Paris and giving tourists a great view of Paris — the Seine, Eiffel Tower, Montmartre and the delightful gardens of Parc Andre Citroen, the only park in the city that fronts the river.
Visiting the park and its gardens the previous week, I’d missed out as the weather had been a bit breezy. As the balloon ascends only when its flat calm and clear, I was thrilled that it was open.
At €18 ($NZ32.72) for a 10-minute ride, it was hardly cheap but I loved every second, getting the promised fantastic views. The Seine sparkled, the Eiffel Tower was clearly visible and by squinting, I was sure I could see Sacre-Coeur on Montmartres hill.
The park and its gardens were the main attraction for me, for though I’d ‘‘done’’ them at ground level a week earlier, seeing them from above gave greater appreciation of the layout of the 14ha site.
The park is named after the founder of the great French car company, Citroen.
In 1914, engineer Andre Citroen built a factory to produce munitions for World War 1. After the war, he converted his factory to produce cars, launching the first Citroen 10CV in 1919.
It was always planned to have a park facing the river but it was not until 1994 that the complex was opened.
An international competition was held in 1985 to choose a designer but the judges couldn’t decide on a clear winner and ending up giving the job to a group of five, led by landscape architect Alain Provost.
Their brief was to collaborate their submissions, so the result was a design by a committee and it shows. There seems little connection between the different parts.
Massive twin glasshouses are well-placed at one end of the long grassed area where the balloon is tethered but I feel the Magnolia grandiflora towers set in containers in a pond alongside the northern greenhouse don’t really fit, not helped by some of the trees looking rather sickly.
More evergreen magnolias on the south side of the complex seem a bit pointless, as do the small (about 2sqm) glassed structures for tender plants set behind the park’s highlight, its colour-themed gardens.
Beyond the colour-themed gardens is a pretty woodland area then a path with rigidly formal plantings that leads to the exit on Quai Andre Citroen.
The seven colour co-ordinated sections retain the ruler-straight, architectural lines seen throughout the park. At the entrance to each plot, a plan of the garden is posted with most of the plants listed.
Ochre-coloured gravel is used cleverly in the Silver Garden, where weeping silver pears (Pyrus salicifolia Pendula) and willows line up along the garden’s sides and the likes of fluffy Salvia argentea grow alongside an unnamed New Zealand ground-hugging Muehlenbeckia, possibly mingimingi (M. astonii).
Another touch of home is Brachyglottis greyi Sunshine, one of a group of hybrids that originated in the Dunedin Botanic Garden about a century ago.
Below each colour-themed garden, water falls in orderly fashion down to the path by the paddock where the balloon awaits its next group of tourists.
The surprisingly quiet, botanically fascinating Parc Andre Citroen was a lovely way to spend a morning in Paris.
