SALA Lecture Series: Louisa Jones

Annual Garden Design Lecture
Louisa Jones
Provence, France

Louisa Jones grew up in Nova Scotia in a family of naturalists, scientists and artists. In 1968, after studies in France, Switzerland and the US, she became a professor of literature at the University of Washington in Seattle where she met her French husband, Bernard Dupont. For some 20 years they taught American students in Avignon, and in 1976 began fixing up a house and garden nearby. Louisa started visiting gardens in the region in order to plan her own, but the project soon grew.

For her first bestseller, Gardens in Provence, published in 1992, she explored more than 200 of all descriptions, from grandmothers’ plots to international designer work. She was much influenced by Nicole de Vésian, and the first to write about the latter’s creation at La Louve. Since then, she has published many articles and 30 books in Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. Her focus is contemporary gardens, landscape design and art, concentrating on Mediterranean France but extending most recently into Italy, Spain, Greece and Morocco.  She still lives and gardens near Avignon where she wakes up every day, in season, to the sound of nightingales.

Lecture supported by the BC Society of Landscape Architects, Golden Spruce Nurseries, Houston Landscapes, SLS / Light Resource, and Stone Event Imports.