I have a bit of an addiction to grand residences regardless of the country they are nestled into and I write about them often on The Diary of an Improvateur.

In her book Garden Inspirations, Charlotte Moss shares a number of visionaries that made an impact on the history of gardens in her chapter “Verdant Voices,” one of which is Empress Joséphine, “The Patron” of the group. Moss enlightens readers about the sovereign’s passion for flowers that resulted in her creation of an “earthly paradise” at the once downtrodden Château de Malmaison, one of France’s grand residences west of Paris that encompassed 150 acres of land when she purchased it and is now a national museum.

I hope to walk through the French interiors of this museum during my next trip to France. “The planning of the grounds was heavily influenced by the English school of landscape design, with its romantic features, gentle rolling lawns, and monumental trees,” Moss writes. It’s interesting to note that Joséphine’s influence didn’t end with her death; in 1844, 30 years after the Empress passed, a rose named Souvenir de la Malmaison appeared. A Russian Grand Duke payed homage to the royal by naming it and planting one of the first specimens of it in the Imperial Garden in St. Petersburg. I have a number of posts under this tag so I if you enjoy stories about or set within grand residences, I hope you’ll stop by.