Come See This Charming French-Style Garden Tour! Landscaping Ideas & Design Tips for French Style!

Welcome, gardeners! Join me and landscape designer Michael Glassman as we explore the most romantic French-inspired garden design! With symmetry, clean linear lines, parterre planters, and even a spool (yes—a spool, a spa-meets-pool hybrid!), this garden brings all the charm of a French vacation right to your own backyard. ⚜️ Enjoy!

Thank you to Michael for giving us a tour of this lovely garden!: http://www.michaelglassman.com/

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[Music] Hey everyone, Jamie here. Welcome back. And welcome back to my good friend Michael Glassman. Greetings. Nice to be back. So, Michael always tells me about his most exciting projects that we’ve worked on. And you’ve been talking about this French style garden. French style garden for And it just finished this week. Like this week. This literally this week. We are pushing it to get this just cuz we’ve been so excited to come out here and see it. We have. And the thing that’s so neat is we thought I thought would be great for your viewers is to show them some different styles of landscape. Like there’s styles of architecture, Mediterranean and tutor and English. There’s also styles of landscaping. And so this is an authentically French garden. Isn’t that the coolest thing? Now you have history with French gardens. I have history with French gardens. There’s a couple reasons why it’s so close to my heart. Number one is I went to design school in the south of France and I spent about 4 months learning the techniques and traveling all over Europe. What an like how amazing how amazing. I know. It was it was pretty it was pretty phenomenal. It was a fellowship and and um it changed my life. I mean it changed my life. And then last year I went for my birthday as maybe all you remembered. I went to the south of France and I met these people when I came back and they said to me the first thing they said to me is we want a formal French garden. That’s what they wanted and we’ll show you the garden and that’s what they got. It’s it’s so exciting. So how fun that you came back from your trip which he showed me the pictures. I’ll I’ll pepper them in throughout this video the pictures from your trip just this last year. But how fun that you could take all the inspiration from your last trip and from your fellowship and then put it into this beautiful garden. Absolutely. And it was is one of the things that you’ll see cuz Jamie’s going to show you the before pictures. Oh yeah. Let me show you some of the before pictures right here. None of this was here. There was a few things in the very back. They had some privets and they had kind of cut them up in a little bit of topiaries and um they the yard was the same size but it was weeds and grass and a broken down planter in the back was painted orange or red. Um and they said to me, “We we want to live out here.” Yes. In fact, we were just talking to them and they said for the first time since it’s been finished, they come out every night. They eat their dinner out of there. They swim in the pool. Isn’t that amazing? They sit at the table with their bathing suit. They cook out here. They turn off their air conditioning. They said, “We’ve never gone out and used our backyard.” But for the first time, they said, “We’re out here every single night, and we plan to be out here every single night.” And I think that’s something that Michael does so special for his designs is to me it seems like your goal is to extend someone’s living space. And you’ve absolutely done that. Like this is a gorgeous, beautiful house, and you’ve doubled the space. Absolutely. really improve the outdoor space that they can come and they can use and they can enjoy this amazing. Absolutely. Cool. So, let me grab the camera and then show us around. And I can’t emphasize this enough. This just got finished. They the the construction workers were still here when we showed up, right? In fact, there’s a few things that still have to be done. They still But we just we were so excited to show this to you guys. So, I’ll keep going. All right, Michael. So, show us around. Should we give a one big overview of the whole thing? Sure. Let’s do a big overview. Why don’t you pan and Okay. So, we walk out the back patio off to the left. Gorgeous, gorgeous fountain. And then my favorite part. Yes. Right. Is this beautiful maple tree with which that was existing and we wanted to make that like the focal point, but what it had is this old planter that was falling down. So, we made very formal the circle um with a seat wall around it in the stone. And then when you look through it, you can see the outdoor fireplace. It makes you want to come and and and and walk through. And the interesting thing is that door. Yeah, that’s her master bedroom. So they can come out of the master bedroom and go and sit by the fire. Oh, isn’t that just amazing? Then we have the little pool. And then over on that side is kind of the more formal raised garden, which is so so very fun. And then for shade, the overhead structure um and with the fans and everything, we still have to have the lights. They’re on. And then this becomes their eating area. And the thing that they were telling me just the other day is they’re in the pool. They they got a heater. They’re in the pool. It’s a spool. Um they’ve got it heated to like 90°. They swim every single day. They get out of the pool in their bathing suits. They cook and they sit and eat dinner here every night. Every every night. Did you say spool? Spool. What is that? Uh spool is a small pool combination spa and pool. Oh my gosh. So you can heat it up and that it does have jets in it, but if you don’t, you can just It’s big enough to float, but not too big that that it overtakes the whole yard. I have never heard of a spool before. And the thing that I love about it is you can we designed it so you can sit around it. So if you were having a big party, people can sit around the spool and um this becomes a sitting area. And then I love the formality of the steps on either side going into it. This is so interesting because this is not a huge yard. This is not a huge yard. This is not It’s not big, right? But just I can’t believe you fit a pool in here. I know. Is that amazing? You really when you’re when you’re not a kid that’s wants to play with, you know, uh pool floaties or something like that, you really just want to sit in the pool, right? You want to sit in the pool or you could just sit in a floaty and float around in there. My gosh, I love that. And do you know how big this is? Um, I think it’s like 15 ft. Yeah, something like that. About 15 feet by 10. Oh my goodness. And the other thing that is we wanted the focal point. So you look at the fountain. It’s not concrete. It’s cast limestone. It’s a company called Haden Stone. And and the thing that I love about it besides the formality, as it ages, it takes on a new patina, so it’ll start looking older and older. That’s the beauty of using limestone. Wow. I I love this. I love it. I love it. And just based off of all the pictures that you showed me from your trip last year, this is exactly it. This is what we saw, you know. Yeah, exactly. So, let’s kind of start from the beginning. So, we come out of the house here and one of the first things that I had them do was the ceiling was just stuckco. It was a little drab. So, what I told them was put a tongue and groove over that and then they stained it. You can see which is which is a trim color of the house. And then add a chandelier. I I love this. Oh, I love the chandelier. I love it. And then to kind of give it a really cool look, look at the mirror with the table. My god, this mirror is incred. Is that incredible? Incredible. Oh my gosh, this is incredible. This is so Michael Glassman. It is so Michael Glassman. It’s true. So that when you come out now, you have a lounging area where you can kind of sit and view the entire yard. So tell me where the furniture is from. Um it’s a company called Terra and um they have amazing amazing furniture and the people were saying what they love about it is no care. Um it’s all teique and then they take the cushions and they store them. It it’s stunning. It is so it’s I love this. I love this. It’s so beautiful and it’s so French but it’s not like over the top scrolly French stuff like that. So let’s talk a little about design. So in the French design everything is very symmetrical. Everything is very balanced. What they use a lot is you’ll notice there’s no free flowing circles or free flowing lines. Yeah. So around the tree is a circular planter. Um planted out. You can see that we have the impatience. The tree becomes a focal point. All of the beds are done. There’s very there’s a lot of symmetry. And in the French gardens they use topiaries. And in um in this case like on either side of the fireplace those are spiral juniper topiaries. and to accent the architecture. And then the beds in the back and around these are all all have boxwood hedges that they’ll let grow up to about 2 feet and cut them so that they’ll look like a box. Do you know how long it’ll take these guys to grow in? They would probably take a year. A year. A year to a year and a half. Oh my gosh. And then what we did was this was where in the before pictures they had that broken down wood. It was kind of red and it was falling down. Yeah. And we had to keep the raised planter because all of the existing foliage was planted higher. So, we didn’t want to and we didn’t want to lose any of the existing foliage because it blocks out the view. So, we did the stone wall. And it’s funny because when I started with working with my clients um and they knew I had just come back from the south of France, they showed me pictures inspiration what they wanted. And again, all of the walls were had stone on it. Yes. Here we go. Everything that they kind of showed me, they said they love the idea of a fireplace. That’s their bedroom. They basically tell me they come out of the bedroom, they can sit chairs here, or they can sit on the round planner and sit by the fire. They come out of the pool if it gets cold, they can sit by the fire. And one of the things that I did was again I I had them face it in stone, but the interior we use the same tile. It’s waterproof and it’s also frost proof, but we use the same tile that’s in the pool for the back of the fireplace. It’s stunning. It is so so beautiful. I also Let’s point out that you used rock as mulch, right? Rock as mulch. Yes. I think sometimes rock as mulch can sometimes look kind of cold and kind of like deserty almost. This is so beautiful, Michael. This looks so good. Mexican black pebble. And so on either side of the fireplace, you have the spiral junipers. Then on either side of the fountain, we did the three ball topiaried also junipers. And then what I wanted to do was kind of break it and um instead of doing a boxwood, which would have taken up too much room, I planted all of it, had it all planted in a scarlet carpet rose, gorgeous, which is which blooms 9 months out of the year. Once a year, you cut it back. But look at the color. I know that with the blue tones of the pool, it’s just going to be amazing. And then you brought that color in again around the maple here. Around the maple. We did that in patience. Wow. Oh, and I love this maple. And I said, “No matter what you do, you cannot get rid of this maple.” It’s lit at night, so the illumination is, oh my god, it’s incredible. And then they did have the one thing they did have is they had this trellis with the jasmine, but I said, you know, you need a focal point. So again, a Haden stone fountain here. Isn’t this interesting? I love it. You don’t see that a lot, but this is just beautiful. You can even float flowers in there. Wouldn’t that be gorgeous? Wouldn’t that be gorgeous? Wait, wait, wait. Point out point out the rocks underneath again. Mexican black pebble in here to again pull out what the stone that we use for for the paving. Okay. What about the paving? Um it’s travertine. It’s silver travertine. Is this what was in Phil’s? It was what was in Phil’s. We originally were going to do slate, but we couldn’t get the slate that’s inside their house. They couldn’t find it. So, we decided on the silver travertine. So beautiful. I mean, I love it. And again, it’s the Versail pattern which is very French. So, FO, we our last garden tour that we just did together was just a um a zero lot home, very small home. It’s really just incredible what you did and that that he used the same the silver traverine. The silver travatine. I am so shocked that this is called black Mexican black pebble cuz you’ve told me about Mexican black. I love it. It comes in different imagined like a dark black but right and if if it gets wet, let me just show you. Okay, it darkens up a little bit. beautiful. Um, but it’s not black black and it just it it picks up all the tones. It’s stunning. And I use I use all sorts of different materials. In fact, we’re coming up one of the garden tours. I did this beautiful Victorian with brick. Yeah. Depending on what the style is and when they filming that, right? Yes. We’re filming that next week. What I basically when the clients told me that they like the stone on the planters, they love the stone for the floor. We we showed them different options and that’s when we picked the silver travertine. Oh, it’s just gorgeous. And then let’s of course point out your channel drains. Channel drains. So because there’s so much hardcape, the water goes somewhere and you can open that up and clean it up. Those are all attached to drains and taken out to the front. Wow. Wow. And then while we’re over here, she the homeowner did get a new greenhouse. It’s brand new. This was a mound and I basically said they said we would like a a greenhouse. So, what we did was we cut cut away the mound, did the raised planter around it, leveled that area up with a concrete floor and a drain, and that was a perfect spot to put their greenhouse. It’s just perfect. It’s going to be so fun and such a fun spot for her to hang out. Exactly. And it’s just a small greenhouse, like, you know, nothing big, but it’s exactly what she needs. Exactly. And he’s an avid gardener also. And so, he told me, I want to grow my own starts. I want to do my own vegetables. I’m so excited for that. I mean, how perfect. It’s on the side of the house. Yeah. It gets plenty of sun. Look at it. Full sun and everything. And the beauty of it is it’s vented. The thing that I love about it is otherwise this would have been a wasted area. They would have never come here. Absolutely. Do you know the color of the stain? Um it’s a slate gray. It’s it’s called slate gray and it’s a it’s a cabb um slate gray. It’s so beautiful. And one of the things again design as as we talk about all the time, design is in the details. I picked that up because the trim of their house has the slate gray. Absolutely. And can we talk about the metal accents they have? Those are real copper. When I came over, when they said to me they want a French design, I understood because all of their downspouts, all of their gutters, their gutters were copper and they’ve already had the petite and they they copper. Look at that, you guys. Look. Is that gorgeous? Oh my gosh. So, they already had some of the things the things that I loved. They had the maple. This was a dogwood. It’s It’s getting fertilized. I didn’t want to get rid of it. No. Um and we want to bring it back. Yeah. In the back, they had some of the privets and we wanted to keep those for privacy. And then we added Japanese blueberries. Japanese blueberries. Look at those. Those are evergreen. They have a white flower. and they’ll get nice and tall. But we got big ones so that again it didn’t look like oh all of a sudden you got these big plants and then nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s going to be so gorgeous with the privets. Oh my goodness. This is just beautiful. Yeah. There’s no way if you had taken out the elevated foliage back here and elevated trees back here, it wouldn’t have looked the same. Exactly. So good. And then one of the things that they said to me is, you know, we we’re in Sacramento. It gets hot, so they needed a shaded area. This was a perfect spot because again, it was a stucco wall that got went straight up. And this is a really important view. So what we did wasn’t here. No. So we we designed the overhead pergola shade structure. Wow. And the thing that I love about it with the fans, we’re waiting on on the lights. Okay. We have these really light light fixtures. But what it is is now you look out, you get to see the focal point of the Haden Stone fountain, lion fountain with the topiaries, the spool, and then as they said, which I loved. She said, “Every night we go in, we get out of our bathing suits, we barbecue, and we sit down here and we eat a meal.” I mean, you’re on vacation. You’re on vacation in your own backyard. Exactly. And then I look at this. Look at this outdoor kitchen. I know Jason would be freaking out right now if he saw this. The top is quartzite, not quartz. Quartzite. Quartzite is a natural stone that can go outdoors as opposed to quartz, which is a synthetic that can’t go outdoors because it can’t handle the cold and the heat, right? And then it becomes It looks like It looks similar, isn’t it? It’s very similar. And then again, little touches from this window. You look out. We did the estate n that is a small Japanese maple, a red dragon with the dicondra dicondra silver falls. Oh, it’s going to be so gorgeous. and then more boxwood around. You guys imagine imagine next year when all this boxwood is filled in and kind of pruned back. It’s going to give so much more formality to this this garden. But again, there’s a light on this. So at night that’s illuminated which is amazing. Gorgeous. And then just the backdrop of their gutters. They’re beautiful. I I can’t get over the gutters. I know. I love them. Gorgeous. So as you come over here, one of the things that he told me was he’s an avid gardener. So we in the French gardens they do what’s called parterare gardens. They are usually framed out with boxwood or they’re raised. So we did the raised you can see planters and this is for the gardens. And what I did to kind of dress it up in the corners we did two in the back the tree roses double delight and in the front we did the bush roses and then the rest you can see he’s got squash and zucchini and tomatoes. Look at his squash. And this is like this is brand new and they’re just thriving. I know that it looks like a lot of shade right now, but that’s just because it’s very early in the morning. This is going to get plenty of sun back here. And these plants are so so very happy. What is this? Um I think that’s an eggplant. Eggplant. Oh, shows how much I do veggie. Both Michael and I are Yeah, I’m not the veggie gardener. No, I’m not either. One of the things that I love is they love Japanese maples. So over there, I planted a red uh coral bark sangukaku um uh Japanese maple. That’s gorgeous. So, isn’t that gorgeous? And then in the winter time, the leaves will fall off and the branches will turn scarlet red. Gorgeous. I love it. And again, it’s a it’s there’s not a lot of planting. You’ve got the boxwood hedge, the foxtail fern, but then the focal point being this coral bark maple. Um, I know I keep pointing out drains, but can we point out how you put rocks over your area drain? Yes, I do that so that again you’re not looking at this ugly drain, but you have the rock there. You have the rock to kind of disguise it and it also keeps the bark from from filling in. I love it. What a fabulous fabulous idea. And I’ve kind of like looked at it all throughout and it’s just these little details like you say, design is in the details. What a great idea. And the wall we we have two air conditioners here. You have the pool equipment and the heater here. We didn’t want to look at it. So again, we did the stucco wall, the concrete block wall, and then face the front and the stone. It blocks out the noise. You don’t have to look at all the equipment. We’ve got accented it with the foxtail ferns. Gorgeous. And it’s beautiful. And you don’t you think that that’s supposed to be there like you think that’s like part of the design when really it’s hiding the inevitable stuff. And and again, these are things we have to have a place for air conditioners. We have to have a place for pool equipment. We have to have a place for garbage cans. So why make it ugly? Why not make it part of the design? It looks like it was meant that was meant to be. Tell me about these gorgeous trees back here. Um, we planted, they wanted privacy so that when you look this way, you don’t see the neighbor’s roof. These are standard English laurels. Do you know how big they’re going to get? Uh, they’ll get about 20 ft. They’re an evergreen prunis lauroseras. And the thing about these in the old Greek times, they used to make the wreaths on the that they put right the the laurel wreaths. That’s what they use the the English laurel. So again, it’s prunis lauroserases. They could have tooka parties here. Yeah, exactly. They can have to terrible joke. No, no. I love it. We planted those along there so they can get up to 20 feet, give them privacy, and yet they also said they wanted some citrus. So, there’s a lime. They had an existing orange. Um, they have the citrus. So, we kind of bunched the citrus in one area. I love it. This is so beautiful. And look, they got basil, different kinds of basil here. Yep. It’s just absolutely incredible. So, let’s talk about how close you’ve planted the prunis laurel. No, Laura Harrises. Laura. Okay. I planted them about four feet apart. And you’re doing that for privacy. For privacy. The ideas I want, you know, and a lot of people say, “Oh, he overpplants.” And maybe that’s true. But I will tell you, hey, you’re talking to the ultimate overpler here. But it was very funny when I went to school in Europe again in the south of France and people always said, “Oh, Michael, over plants over plants.” And I thought, “And they’re going to use totally different plants in Europe.” One of the things that we learned is a lot of the same plants that we th that thrive in California do beautifully in Europe. Totally. Um and when I started looking at the designs, I underplant. They’ll put those two feet on center and if they get too big, they prune them up. They they topiary them, they cut them, they espalier them. So when I was working on designs for classroom and the and the instructor would say, “You put some more plants in there. It’s it’s too sparse.” So where we a lot of people think I overplant in Europe they think I underplant and I think that comes from your your your education right and this is something that I don’t often see people plant the privacy trees but I see it every single time in your designs and it’s stunning it is and it’s a funny thing is a funny story some of my clients are older and I used to recommend smaller specimens and smaller size and further apart and I had one older lady lovely lovely lady And she goes, “Young man,” she turned to me, she goes, “Young man, I don’t want to be in a home or out of my house by the time my garden looks good.” So she said, “Give me big, give me wonderful. Give me planted so that I can enjoy it now.” And I thought, “That’s a good point. That’s a good point. Right. Give people what they want.” And in a year or two, this is this is going to be amazing. This is going to be amazing. I mean, when you think about this yard was completed, literally completed this week. I mean, it still has things that’s not completely done, but Right. Wow. How amazing. I can’t wait to come back and see it when it’s all gone. Oh, I agree. And you know what? It’s funny because I will say no matter what angle you look at, it’s really it’s beautiful. It’s really good. It’s got the the the lines are great, the angles are great, the symmetry is great. Um, you can definitely feel the French influence and the clients, the fact that they already are using it and they love it. They’re so happy with it. They are so happy. And to hear a client say, “We’re out every night. We never went out in our yard, but every night we’re swimming, we’re eating, we’re dining, and we can’t wait to get outside.” She said, “We’re saving money because we’re turning off the air conditioner.” Exactly. Which in California, it’s like what? Well, the last thing that I’ll say, Michael, is I am so impressed with the diff this, like I like we said, this is not a huge yard. This is a smalish yard, but you have incorporated utility area, partera garden, raised garden, kitchen area, pool area, fire pit area, lounge area, and greenhouse area. Yeah. Holy cow. Good job. Thank you. As I always tell people, no space is a throwaway space. every every space is so valuable for real estate that you don’t want to throw it away. And it actually makes it because it’s got different purposes, easier to take care of because you can take care of the vegetable garden basically back there. All you really have to do is once a year prune the boxwoods to shape them. You don’t have to do anything to the background planting and then you have to keep the topiaries pruned. Once a year you cut the carpet roses and otherwise just enjoy just enjoy your yard. Well, this is absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much for letting us come here. Thank you to the homeowners for letting us come here. I know we kind of rushed them cuz we were so excited to see this. We were so excited. But this is just absolutely beautiful. Thank you. So, I hope you all enjoyed this and I hope you all have a chance to get in your garden today. [Music] Hey, [Music]