Edmond Rostand’s Arnaga: A Poem in Stone and Garden Design
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
April 1, 1868
Dearest reader,
On this day, the world was gifted with Edmond Rostand, the dapper French poet and dramatist whose flair for drama extended far beyond the written word and into the very earth and vines of his beloved gardens.
Picture, if you will, the splendid Arnaga villa nestled in Cambo-les-Bains, France, a veritable poem of stone and greenery spanning 37 exquisite acres.
Edmond designed his gardens with poetic precision: a stately French garden greeting the soft glow of the rising sun in the east, and an English garden unfolding its romantic charm to the setting sun in the west.
Edmond himself called Arnaga "a poem of stone and greenery," and no less has it been crowned the “Little Versailles” of the Basque country—a place where nature’s beauty and human artistry dance with eloquence. As a gardener might balance light and shadow, so Edmond balanced his space, blending formal topiaries and reflective water mirrors with wildflower meadows and winding paths.
He is best remembered for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, in which his gift for words and emotion found its most enduring voice.
Yet, even in his verse, the garden whispered:
My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own.
How stirring, dear reader, to be reminded that every gardener’s soul craves connection—to flora both cultivated and wild, orderly and unruly alike.
What might Edmond’s gardens teach us? \
How often do we pause to honor the weeds alongside our prized blossoms, seeing in both the vibrant pulse of life?
And how carefully do we guard our own private gardens, the inner sanctuaries where our soul gathers strength and solace?
Perhaps Arnaga inspires us to craft our own “poem of stone and greenery,” a place where we balance the rising and setting suns of our days.
Let us raise a glass to Edmond Rostand, whose gardens and words alike remain timeless invitations to cherish beauty, both bold and delicate, and to tend with heart what is truly our own.
