A historic garden revisited

In 2019, MDP was entrusted with reviving this historic garden in under a month. The garden was first created at the end of the 19th century by French landscape architect Édouard André. A vast expanse of grassy lawn bordered by tree-lined promenades, André’s garden framed a breathtaking view toward the Monte Carlo Casino, a work by French architect Charles Garnier. In the 1970s, an underground parking lot was cut into the rock and covered over with a concrete slab, radically altering the meticulous greenery of André’s composition. Adding an engineered layer between the parking lot and the ground above transforms this hardscape surface, enabling both the restoration and modernization of the original design. This large, highly technical subsurface infrastructure forms the framework underlaying the new garden. Two long, slightly sunken grassy lawns – the “lawn bowling greens,” or “boulingrins” in French – form an alternating sequence with three plazas, restoring the line of sight down the garden. Four sets of wide, greened ramps make the garden accessible for all. The planting composition, designed in partnership with botanists, revives the encyclopedic richness so characteristic of gardens in the French Riviera.