21. Le calendrier des sept lunes

A garden calendar like no other, governed by the Festival’s seven moons. And governed as it is by the lunar cycle, the garden also has seven moons hidden away within it, awaiting your discovery – but you’ll have to look carefully to find them!

The lunar garden is a sensorial and olfactory experience, dedicated to time and the moon, to anticipation, to play and to childhood.

To take in at a glance or to savour moon after moon – both the one and the many. Marking the passage of time, a new window opens up every week, a tempting invitation to return and discover the treasures in store the following week... and the week after, throughout the Festival season. 28 openings on a crescent moon and only one of them accessible each week, thanks to a deliriating mechanism that makes the anticipated moment of surprise a true delight. 28 cabinets of curiosities, each with its own life, first hidden and then revealed for the pleasure of one and all.

Régine Charvet-Pello set up her design and communication agency RCP Design Global in 1986. For the last 25 years, she has been developing projects focusing on “new ways of life” in the following fields: the world of childhood, luxury goods and cosmetics, tourism and cultural heritage, energy, urban design and public transport. In collaboration with Jean-François Bassereau (professor and expert in sensory metrology) she created an RCP department, SENSOLAB, specialising in technologies of the senses and aimed at manufacturers. Régine Charvet-Pello takes an active part in competitive clusters, including Cosmetic Valley, through development of one of its strategic fields of action: the sensory. Along with François-Rabelais University in Tours, she initiated the Centre of Studies and Research on Technologies of the Senses (CERTESENS), which houses a sensory “matériauthèque” – a kind of library in which materials (wood, plastics and metals) are classified according to their impact on the senses. 

 

Alix de Saint Venant lives on the family estate of Château de Valmer, near Vouvray in Touraine, whose historic 16^th- and 17^th-century garden (labelled “Jardin Remarquable”) she has breathed new life into. A landscaper and botanist, she is mainly involved in restoration of old parks and gardens. An indefatigable globetrotter, she travels the world in search of plants from here and elsewhere, from bygone days and the present day. In 2000, she replanted Valmer’s kitchen-garden conservatory, which bears witness to biodiversity in all its glory and the constant search for true ecological balance.

 

Marc de Ferrière le Vayer is a Professor of Economic and Social History at François-Rabelais University in Tours. A specialist in the history of companies and the history of techniques, he applies the same analysis grid to the history of food. A member of many scientific committees and an expert on behalf of the Ministry of Research and AERES, he holds the UNESCO "Safeguard and Enhancement of Food Cultural Heritages” chair at François-Rabelais University as well as being Assistant Director of its Doctoral School. He is President of the European Institute for the History and Culture of Food (IEHCA).

 

Xavier Mathias is an organic market gardener and producer of vegetables and plants. A true lover of diversity, he grows and markets over 300 species and varieties of edible plants, all cultivated on the “Champ de Pagaille” estate in the south of Touraine, near the delightful little village of Chédigny. A teacher in the continuing education department of the National School of Landscaping in Versailles, he is also the author of numerous works on kitchen gardening (including “Délicieux Légumes pour Jardiniers Curieux” published by Editions Rustica, and “Le Potager d'Alix de Saint Venant au Château de Valmer: Comment Cultiver 1000 et 1 Plantes Insolites” co-authored with Alix de Saint Venant and published by Editions du Chêne) and contributes a regular column to the Rustica Hebdo magazine.