11. éternelles éphémères

This garden attempts to provide access to the essential meaning of things, to the elusive beauty of geographic realities, and do so in the image of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince: by experiencing the ephemerality of flowers and making every effort to capture their essence before they disappear, we are trying to crystallise their power, their splendour, their scent, their colour.

A garden abrim with grasses and perennial plants, aflame with multiple inflorescences, dried flowers, flowers in flight and seeds sown, leads visitors onwards, into the ineluctable passage of time. This immersive experience, taking them into the very heart of the ephemeral, leads to a clearing filled with mineral flowers. Flowers that keep their beauty forever for they have been ground in the mill of the poet’s mind, flowers without roots, which have only what the painter would have them keep of their essence in a painting.

Although ephemeral, the Little Prince’s rose on its own was worth more than all the lasting realities known to the geographer, for it was she whom he had taken to his heart. Passing, fugitive realities are essential to our existence, for they alone give it meaning. What are of importance are not seas, cities and landscapes, but the rich, deeply felt relationships we forge between those seas, cities and landscapes and ourselves. We are brought to confront our relationship with the living, and that is the real power of flowers.

Designers

Emeline BROSSARD, State-registered (DPLG) landscaper, and Lucie BULOT, architect accredited to exercise her profession in her own name (HMONP)
FRANCE

From left to right: Emeline Brossard and Lucie Bulot

"It was while we were taking a degree course in applied arts that we started sharing a growing interest in the conceptual aspects of tomorrow’s spatial planning. Our paths first crossed at ENSAMAA Olivier de Serres, and have continued to develop in parallel and reciprocally over the years, although in very different areas of endeavour.”

Lucie BULOT
"My work has always been motivated by a deep-seated desire to open up new perspectives, always in line with my convictions as an architect, aware of the evolution in architectural practice and wishing to re-examine its potentialities. I don’t regard architecture as an object, but rather as an ongoing story, made up of human beings, knowledge, places and materials. To my mind, such an approach enables men’s and women’s active appropriation of reinvented programmes, worn-out models rethought, materials transformed, knowledge exchanged, a recomposed constructive grammar, and projects that are laboratories. Over my four years’ experience working at international agencies (including Dominique Perrault, AREP and Wilmotte et Associés) – years that made me the architect I am today – I wanted to develop my relationship with architectural production while exploring such new fields of action as urban planning and landscaping. My participation in the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival, in collaboration with Emeline Brossard, is very much a part of this dynamic.”

Emeline BROSSARD
"I have a special interest in the conceptual aspects of the projects I work on, and my artistic approach has often orientated me towards their emergence, whatever scale they happen to be on. Contextual and cultural understanding of a territory comes about in an intrinsic dialogue between the fragment and “off-limits” dissemination of the site. The idea behind each operation is to give the site meaning by highlighting what is already omnipresent, in particular through its living components. This approach sharpens our eye and whets our appetite for sites to come in the wake of social change. The site’s poetic aspects seem to me to be indissociable from the way we interpret landscape; they run through us and the memories we retain have a direct effect on our senses and the way we see things. The progressive widening of my studies has led to varied professional experience, working for agencies as well as on my own projects, while continuing to refine my approach as a State-registered landscaper. I’m currently working on a variety of projects, both on my own behalf, across France, and for landscaping agencies in the Paris region. My collaboration with Lucie Bulot for the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival is a shared project with real momentum behind it.”