Gardens of the French Riviera. 
A country of Palms and Cacti, of casinos and extraordinary- 
villas, is what the Riviera seems to the hurried or even the 
leisurely but rather lazy tourist; for climate and tourists have 
been the undoing of a country born beautiful and then smoth- 
ered in adornment. Even the name "Riviera" is an exotic, for 
all France speaks of Cannes or Nice or Monte Carlo as "The 
Midi." 
The road that runs along the shore from the Italian frontier 
at Ventimiglia to Hyeres and be} r ond seems to the hurrying 
motorist the centre of the region. Instead, it is the artificial 
edge of the beautiful hill country above it. Through this country 
the "Grande Corniche" or great upper road runs for fifteen or 
twenty kilometers; but distant views give it its fame, not trees 
and flowers and meadows. 
Nowhere are there more beautiful growing things than on 
the slopes of those hills and in the valleys and gorges between 
them. Live Oaks and Acacias, Heather and Olives are the 
charming green and yellow, white and gray background for 
little terraced vegetable and flower gardens, for blossoming 
Peach and Almond, Cistus and Anemones. Above Cannes, for 
instance, you may walk every day through new groves and 
meadows, along the banks of little canals two or three feet wide, 
by stony narrow paths hollowed in the side of a ravine, up and 
down steep banks where out-cropping roots give the only foot- 
hold, or through groves of Aleppo and Stone Pines warmed by 
(*J the sun to aromatic sweetness. 
But these are not the gardens of the Riviera, being beautiful 
and indigenous and wholly natural. 
The gardens are between the sea and the road occasionally; 
usually on the side of the road away from the sea and so shut 
in as to get little view of the mountains. Their trees are Palms, 
their flowers bedded-out Cinerarias and Primroses and tender 
annuals grown in the green-house and replenished almost weekly. 
I lived in the midst of one of the best of these gardens for 
two months last winter, at the Hotel du Pare at Cannes, and 
' ---• found it very engaging. The Palms are magnificent, the Camelias 
glossy and covered with fat flowers, the beds in every con- 
ceivable geometric pattern. The Jasmine and Roses are charm- 
ing and the Hotel, ornate and mannered as its garden, is sur- 
% passingly good and comfortable. It was formerly the Villa 
Vallombrosa, a private estate, and should be visited as an 
" ,s - example of the exotic but well-designed Riviera garden. It is 
a little more than a mile west of Cannes along the Route de 
Frejus. The proprietors are proud of their garden and you 
^ may see it at any time. 
Not so the garden of the Villa Rothschild, just across the 
way. In all the two months that I spent a stone 's-throw from 
W 131 
c 
£JoS". 
