A week out from the 2024 Olympic Games, and the historic centre of Paris has undergone a remarkable transformation: a mostly car-free zone resembling, in parts, a colossal stadium, following the construction of temporary sporting venues and seating. From the Pont d’Austerlitz in the east to Pont d’Iéna in the west, the city’s network of bridges has been closed off to traffic, as have the roads that flank the Seine, in order to accommodate the rows and rows of spectator stands erected for the opening ceremony. Stadium-style bleachers surround Place de la Concorde, too. Once a site for beheadings, where Marie Antoinette was guillotined, it is now a venue for the skateboarding, BMX, 3x3 basketball and break-dancing competitions.
Amid the clanging of construction work, the city’s 1,500-strong team of gardeners have been working tirelessly to prepare Paris’s parks and gardens for their moment in the spotlight. By mid-July, the garden beds all over the city are a sight to behold, resplendent with the summer blooms they ferried in and planted in April and May: a vibrant swath of anemones, sweet woodruff, geraniums, mountain fleece, marigolds and a new, uncontested favourite: a double-headed decorative dahlia of striking vermilion.
The flower is a unique hybrid variety created by the city’s horticultural team based in the Parc Floral, the botanic gardens in the Bois de Vincennes; it has been selected by the city as the official Olympic bloom. More than 50,000 are now planted throughout 150 of the city’s green spaces, from larger parks such as Trocadero to smaller, off-the-beaten-path gardens, such as the Édouard-Vaillant square in the 20th arrondissement or the garden of the Fondation Dosne-Thiers in the 9th arrondissement. They stand out: their colourful ray florets stretch outwards and upwards like fireworks above towering stems and dark foliage.
“The idea was to select a flower we made with our own hands that would be distinct to us — something you can’t find anywhere else,” says David Lacroix, department head of DEVE, La Direction des Espaces Verts et de l’Environnement of Paris, the government organisation charged with planning, developing and maintaining the city’s green spaces, who likens the colour of the bloom to the Olympic flame.
Metaphors aside, while the flower is not an official mascot, it’s more compelling than the bizarre Phryges, twin cartoon-like anthropomorphic caps being sold as plush toys, which the French newspaper Libération likened to a giant “clitoris in trainers”.
Lacroix and I meet in the Champs-Élysées gardens, the roughly 15-ha stretch of parklands and gardens that line the historic boulevard, where several new garden beds and “green spaces” with misting stations have been planted in time for the Games. The promenade, whose origins stretch back to the 17th century, is an urban oasis between Place de la Concorde and the Grand Palais, where the fencing and Taekwondo will take place, and it will see a significant amount of foot traffic, though almost all the city’s gardens have been given a little extra boost this year.
“We’ve set the bar high for the summer of 2024 so that all our gardens will be the most beautiful, the most welcoming, for the great pleasure of Parisians and visitors,” he says.
Created in 2016 by Lacroix’s colleague Christophe Kneblewski, the variety was originally named the “Parc Floral de Paris” dahlia, after the DEVE laboratory there, where it was cultivated in vitro. Though dahlia season is in full swing in late summer, this variety was chosen for its hardiness and early flowering — perfectly in sync with the Games, from mid-July and continuing until late September.
Earlier this year, the propagated tubers were planted en masse in the city-owned horticultural production fields in Rungis, south of Paris, before spring planting in the city. “We were a bit worried about this spring’s conditions because there was a lot of rain and not much heat or sunshine, but they have done well,” says Lacroix.
Lacroix’s team cultivate many of their own plants and even the trees for the city’s green spaces, which continue to increase in number under the stewardship of socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo. Beyond planting new gardens, the team is, on a near daily basis, adding vegetation along the streets, the avenues and, particularly, in front of schools. “There is a huge programme to vegetate the city, including the diversification of tree and plant species,” he says.
Creating new varieties, as with this dahlia, is less common but a passion, Lacroix says, for Kneblewski, who is a dahlia expert and enthusiast, and responsible for the Parc Floral’s dahlia garden and collection of 420 varieties. Such is its status that each autumn, the Parc Floral has held an international dahlia competition.
This newest creation will not be entered in this year’s competition, nor will it make a cameo in the Olympic athletes’ official bouquets. Beyond the city’s gardens and parks, it will be showcased in the floral arrangements that dress up the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and other administrative venues — as a key player in the ultimate soft power show.