Heritage roses and gardens - La Bonne Maison - A collection of old and botanic roses

This is a remarkable garden. The collection of old roses is given 2 stars in the Michelin Green Guide.

At ten minutes' distance from the very centre of Lyon, tucked behind the tall walls of No 101, Chemin de Fontanières at La Mulatière, is one of the 25 most beautiful gardens in the world according to Peter Beales: La Bonne Maison d'Odile MASQUELIER.

Odile MASQUELIER, the garden's owner, has, for 50 years, devoted herself to the creation of La Bonne Maison that was also her childhood home. During the visit she will share with you her knowledge of botany and gardening for which she has become internationally renowned.

La Bonne Maison is involved in the preservation of and research on old and botanical roses. It is a large garden of some 9,500 square meters that includes 65 arches smothered in roses. There are more than 800 varieties flowering as from March for the botanical, Persian and China roses, until winter when the hips continue to provide colour as well as food for birds.

For visual pleasure as well as the health of the plants, the roses are surrounded with companion plants making up splendid collections of bulbs, poppies, iris, peonies, hydrangeas and flowering and fruit-bearing shrubs that renew the display throughout the year.

For 25 years the garden has prospered without chemical treatment or weed-killers.

La Bonne Maison

The visit of this Remarkable Garden transforms the many visitors from all over the world. Indeed, like Alice crossing the mirror, you will enter this magical place and be changed. You will discover rare and/or emblematic heritage and botanical roses, modern roses, remarkable trees, collections of clematis, poppies, iris, hydrangea, bulbs, perennials and shrubs. We are dealing here with an artist who dreamed and drew her garden alone, with an incredible aesthetic sense. Everything is in this garden: the architecture given by the big trees like Sophora, the perspectives dominating the city of Lyon with the guard of the Tuscan cypresses protecting the garden, the statuary scattered with happiness in the garden as Deeping Sarah at the edge of the basin, the color palette of plants, the beautiful creepers madly climbing large trees like Rosa longicuspis chinensis 'Odile' planted in the Ramnus and donated by Maurice Foster. Because this garden is also the story of encounters and friendship with passionate people around the world. Odile tells theses stories with great emotion and pleasure as a garden is a place of sharing and exchange.

A garden is also a privileged place that, when you need to take time for yourself, brings Peace, Serenity and is conducive to contemplation.

End of May 2019, Odile decided to not open her garden every morning to the public as she has been doing it since a long time. She will only be accepting groups in 2020, upon appointment, from March to June.

A very good news: her book La Bonne Maison is reissued by Arthaud and Flammarion in the pocket collection. It will be in bookstores by January 8, 2020.

A last point, Odile MASQUELIER is the founding president of our association Roses Anciennes en France.