Jardin Majorelle

The blue is what everyone remembers first. What makes Jardin Majorelle worth looking at closely is the way that colour behaves among living things: against a dense green leaf, through the movement of bamboo, beside the outline of a cactus. The garden offers a lesson in contrast that changes as you move.

Created by painter Jacques Majorelle, it was acquired by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1980, saving it from a proposed development. The painter’s former studio now houses the Musée Pierre Bergé des arts berbères, adding another layer to a visit through its exploration of Amazigh material culture.

For us, this connection between colour, planting and crafted objects is the reason to keep the garden in the conversation. Familiarity can make a place seem exhausted before you arrive; the remedy is to look at something smaller. A shadow across a wall. The interval between two pots. A surface whose colour changes beside another material.

Pair the garden with the nearby Yves Saint Laurent museum, but allow each its own pace. One makes a composition with growth and movement, the other with brick and controlled light. Together, they offer two very different ways to think about how a place can shape a creative imagination.