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Photo by : Georges Lévêque .
Gilles Clément is a hard man to immobilize down . dear eff as the designer of original public parks in France and gardens from Chile to New Caledonia , he also write popular fiction , novels and philosophic contemplation . He is an outspoken ecologist , phytologist and bugologist who discovered the butterflyBunoeopsis clementiiin 1974 in Cameroon . Clément has always been a leader rather than a follower of mode . In the early 1970s , having just graduate with degrees in both scientific agriculture and landscape painting design , he was already defending “ biological gardening , ” an early version of today ’s “ forge with , not against nature ” theme . He champions a “ humane bionomics ” — not the wild-eyed veneration of nature unspoiled by man , but partnership . Now a professor at the prestigious Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture , he is its only lecturer to instruct rude history as well as pattern concepts . Young protagonist turn out in drove to hear him lecture all over France and would make him into a guru , were he not humorous and unassuming . Not unlike other master of the profession , he himself prefers to be called , only , a gardener .
Life - commute consequence : As a teenager , help his forefather spray roses with a highly toxic chemical substance , he acquire some in an open cut and spent two day in a comatoseness . Soon after , Clément hightail it his father ’s extremely regimented garden in the beautifully wooded Creuse expanse in the south of Paris to examine nature in a nearby valley , and in 1977 , he was able-bodied to buy the land in Creuse where he had sought refuge when he was vernal . He built a Harlan F. Stone theatre there with his own hands and transformed the glade into one of France ’s most admired gardens , now call off La Vallée . It is still a sanctuary for himself , kinfolk , friends and other animal .
At La Vallée , Clément first experiment with the “ Moving Garden ” ( le jardin en mouvement ) , influential as of 1985 . Abandoned farmland , pass on to its own devices , bit by bit acquire toward forest ontogenesis . For Clément , the gardener ’s intervention is not only admissible , it is cardinal . He observe : “ Watching wasteland , I am not only trance by the energy of nature ’s reclamation , I also need to hump how to introduce myself in the thick of this knock-down current . ” He chooses the bit when spontaneous growth involves all the elements ordinarily find in a garden : Tree , shrubs , vines , bulbs , grass — even wild blush wine . The gardener ’s function then is to guide and enrich in sympathy with natural process , integrate accidents like fallen trees . Clément uses no chemicals , no supplementary tearing and no noisy , vigor - wasting machinery . But he does prune : A ego - sown willow tree is trim to show off its multiple trunks ; wild hornbeams are clip into suave dome ; a route uphill meanders through the heart of a sprawling smokebush ( Cotinus obovatus ) . Most itinerary are simply mown green goddess , their routing changing from year to year to preserve ego - sown bunch of foxglove , genus Verbascum or hogweed , which draws many interesting insects . “ A garden is always unreal , ” he insist , “ but house gardens can become wildlife preserve . ”
Movement , as he sees it , involves seasonal variation and variety due to self - sowing and metal money migration . Moving garden , lived in or visited , are never purely ocular but very tactile — you kneel , lie down , rub against , odor , inhale . “ My gardens are meant to be brushed against , ” writes Clément . His first volume devoted to the Moving Garden has been reprinted five times .
In the late ’ eighty and ’ 90s , Clément worked on mainly public projects such as a main division of the Parc André - Citroën in Paris ( with landscape designer Alain Provost and architects Patrick Berger , Jean - Francois Jodry and Jean - Paul Viguier ) , the Valloires Abbey gardens ( Les Jardins de Valloires ) in Picardy , the Jardins de la Grande Arche de la Défense in Paris , the Henri Matisse Park in Lille , gardens of the Chateau de Blois and the Mediterranean Gardens ( Le Jardin des Méditerranées ) of the Domaine du Rayol . His most influential work internationally has perhaps been his part of the Parc André - Citroën . It includes a Moving Garden managed by the park stave : It is they who decide where the paths will be mow from year to year , to esteem self - sown plants . Nearby , his color - themed gardens have a complex symbolism , which visitors might sense even if uninformed . mother report that when they enter the Green Garden , linked to the base of silence , their children often stop talk .
In 1997 , Piet Oudolf , Henk Gerritsen and Michael King point out on these garden ( inNieuwe bloemen , nieuwe tuinen ): “ Gilles Clément ’s victory at Parc André - Citroën demonstrates the range of opening the prowess of gardening offers for both ego - grammatical construction and communication . He has shown how theme may be presented both on the expansive ordered series and in the tiniest detail , make his approach as relevant to the private gardener as it should be to the broader world of the landscape architect . ”
Clément resist the romantic idea of an artist ’s signature tune , but his public projects have common elements : He often yoke disjoined spaces — formally , as at Citroën or colloquially , like clarification in a wood — each with its own lineament . connect course are meandering and multidirectional . Where he include a undivided long axis vertebra ( at Le Grande Arche de la Défense in the Domaine du Rayol ) , it never dominates in the sense of imposing a hierarchy and reveals trivial of the mysteries on either side , easily accessed from the prospicient line of merchandise but invisible until you happen right upon it . He sometimes uses geometrical shapes , especially around historical monuments or where symbolization is suggested , but this formality is open - ended , almost insurgent in its capriciousness . His rejection of power structure , in garden design as in life , is almost obsessive . For several years running , Clément refused the Gallic national prize for landscape architecture , importune it should be given to the anon. farmers , engineers and foresters who are the real architects of the landscape . In 1999 , the dirty money was bestowed on him without his consent .
Clément calls the Moving Garden a conceptual tool . His second one , the Planetary Garden , egress after he had seen the first exposure of Earth from space . He imagined extending the confines — and care — lavish on home gardens to the whole globe . In 2000 , Clément target a major science display in Paris to explain and provide positive instance of this theme . He also took a posture on species migrations similar to that of American writer Michael Pollan , which has not always made him popular in the scientific community . “ The independent objective , ” writes Clément , “ is to encourage biologic diversity , a source of wonder and our warranty for the future tense . ”
For the past few years , Clément has been developing another concept , which he calls “ landscape of the Third Kind . ” A study of highly supervise farm and forest nation in the south of Paris led him to seek out hidden spaces that escape monoculture and are forgotten by human industriousness , in - between spaces often abandoned after misuse , still adequate to of unwritten revival . He has always had fellow feeling for borderline and neglect spaces — as La Vallée once was . His attempts at integrating such freedom into municipal invention have raise controversial .
Clément continues to bring out , consult and make worldwide . You never quite know where or when . Constant however is his faith in the garden : “ substantial terrain , mystic but explorable , it invites the gardener to define its space , its riches , its home ground . It holds humanity suspended in time . Each seed announces tomorrow . It is always a project . The garden produces trade good , bears symbols , accompanies dreams . It is accessible to everyone . It promise nothing and gives everything . ”
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