Staring at the ground in France: paving surfaces

Although this wasn’t the main goal of our sabbatical in France, it was definitely part of our explorations. France has a lot of public spaces and often budgets that allow interesting work to be done using native stone and other materials.

Set flush with surrounding paving, with cutouts for trees

Sometimes the work is not the best: these joints are huge. The stone continues as caps on walls – for a garden that cries out for colorful gnomes and giant plastic mushrooms.

Most of this church plaza is the light colored stone to the right. The granite border runs along the sides, and the pink stone wall defines the space with a low planter.

Granite and native stone, used in a church plaza, Alsace.

Gravel is probably the most common paving used in public gardens, along with decomposed granite. This path has some native flagstones mixed in. The sheared low hedge trims the gravel, adding a note of formality.

Cut stone allows pavement and wall to match. Sheared lavender backs up the wall. Alsace, France.

These tiles supposedly came from a convent, retasked as the floor of a large art studio.

Placing the rough tiles in a garden changes them. They gather moss and lichen, gaining a more weathered look. Ile de France.

These uneven stones add a more rustic look to an area bordering the Rhine. The disadvantage? The stones are uneven and slippery when wet, especially if they’re covered with wet leaves.

Green moss and porphyry stone make a great complimentary color contrast. This stone is ultra-hard and works great for drivable surfaces.

This kind of thing – creating paving patterns – is called “calepinage” in French. Here, fan pattern porphyry is mixed with pavers in a plaza.

This pattern mixes porphyry, granite and interlocking concrete pavers surrounding a catch basin. Alsace.

Coastal native plants emerge from stark white cobblestones – nicely integrated into the manhole cover. Adjacent flagstones cover the main walking surface. Vendée, France.

This pattern, with its flat, even surface probably facilitates snow removal in winter. Alsace.

This park in Paris is heavily used by runners, every day. The paving in the loop where they run is hard-packed decomposed granite. It’s unclear if a stabilizing agent was used, since in wet areas the surface becomes quite muddy. Luckily, the muddy parts aren’t on the jogging path.

The goal was to find patterns and materials we can adapt to our designs here in California. Not everything can be translated here – sometimes the labor and materials costs would be prohibitive, as with the white cobbles and manhole cover. Others, like the lavender and wall could be done with cut sandstone. Porphyry, although not commonly used here, is available and looks great in California landscapes.

We also look at maintenance. Wood tends not to be sealed, left instead to weather naturally. The most popular seems to be ipe, with grooves running down the boards to reduce slipping. In some places, the cobbles – about 4″ x 4″ x 4″ or so – pop out of the paving pattern, no doubt reset as repair crews become available. We could not tell how the decomposed granite was maintained in the park, but there are likely people who ensure that it’s level and firm despite constant pedestrian traffic.

There’s a definite tendency to let things weather instead of constantly pressure washing and sealing them – something the Japanese call wabi-sabi, allowing things to be as they are, imperfect. It’s an idea people should consider more often, as it gives gardens a lived-in, natural look and drastically reduces maintenance.

One material that’s not so common is concrete slab paving. They’re much more likely to use asphalt or colored asphalt (typically reddish). They’ll border the asphalt with stone or other materials to dress it up, and it seems to work well. We did not come across any colored, stamped, sealed concrete in our wanderings – where concrete was used as a paving material, it tended to be in the form of pavers. Considering the maintenance required to keep colored, stamped and sealed concrete looking its best – combined with acceptance of wabi-sabi, it seems a logical choice. There may be other reasons, such as maintaining underground utilities: it’s a lot easier to cut, remove and patch asphalt than concrete.

Local stone is often used, reinforcing the regional feel. There’s much less tendency to import stone from far away, at least outside major cities. The result is a more unified, consistent feel from space to space within a town. This is further supported by uniform styles of roof tiles: typically slate in the north and tile in the south. Wall stones tend to be likewise similar.

Vehicular surfaces are overwhelmingly paved with porphyry and granite where an upgraded material is desired. Interlocking concrete pavers and asphalt cover the remaining vehicular spaces.