12. l'homme qui aimait les fleurs

This being had a special dream all of his own: a lover of flowers, he wished their preservation above all things. Those flowers, his flowers, whose countless colours and shapes made him ever happier, ever more wonderstruck by their eternal regeneration and ever more joyful at their extraordinary adaptability, had become an obsession. And each individual, every living thing was a threat to their purity and integrity.
A man of strong character and great powers of persuasion, he brought his fellows together to make his dream a reality. With their help, he assembled all the flowers in the world and imprisoned them within great blocks of stone. Massive, solid, cold and spare, the blocks made perfect pedestals for his flowers. A seasoned collector, he took the greatest care in lining them up in rows and columns and had a protective wall built around them. Satisfied, he proclaimed himself King of Flowers.
Not long afterwards, the man passed away and his body turned back into earth. It brought forth a flower, whose seeds made their way into the gaps between the blocks. The seedlings’ roots fractured the rock and in a stupendous explosion of shapes and colours, the flowers were freed from their grip.
The man had forgotten the essential fact: they may be fragile, puny and ephemeral, but flowers are made to be shared and to evolve.

Designers

Jeanne MARTIN, Coralie MICHEL, Julien MAGNAN, Franck MASANELL, and Guillaume NOUVELLON, students
AGROCAMPUS OUEST
FRANCE

From left to right: Guillaume Nouvellon, Coralie Michel, Julien Magnan, Jeanne Martin and Franck Masanell

A native of Niort in Deux-Sèvres, Julien Magnan has been a nature and landscape lover since early childhood. Whether in the family garden, during his first freelance job as a secondary-school florist or the various projects he has successfully carried out since, or now, through his apprenticeship at EIVE, he has always combined theory with practice. His varied experience has acquainted him with the different aspects of the landscaper’s craft and made him aware of the impact that landscapers can have on the environment that surrounds us. Currently in his final year at Agrocampus Ouest Angers (INHP), specialising in project management and engineering, he sees the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival as a fresh opportunity to combine creativity, technical expertise and practical experience in a project he has designed in collaboration with a group of friends.

Having always been interested in painting and art in general, Jeanne Martin opted to study visual communication. After passing a Science Baccalaureate, she looked for ways of combining creativity with technical applications and finally enrolled as a first-year student at Agrocampus Ouest Angers (INHP), as training as a landscape engineer seemed a good balance between art and science. Her final-year specialisation in project management and engineering enabled her to monitor projects from design to completion and keep her high degree of versatility up to par. She is rounding off her education by indulging her strong personal interest in computer science, finally becoming a student entrepreneur and developing 3D modelling software for landscaping professionals. After completing her studies, she is thinking of making a career in Building Information Modelling (BIM) so that she can go on combining the creative with the technical, putting digital technology at the service of landscaping project management. The Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival has provided her with a real opportunity to participate in a shared project to which the entire team is wholeheartedly committed. All the more important for her, as she was born in Loir-et-Cher and has always been fascinated by the history of the Loire châteaux.

After studying applied arts at the National Higher School of Applied Arts and Crafts (ENSAAMA) and obtaining a Higher Technical Agricultural Certificate (BTSA) in Landscaping at TECOMAH, Franck Masanell enrolled at Agrocampus Ouest Angers (INHP) and joined the Arc-en-Terre landscaping agency, where he is currently completing his apprenticeship with Project Management and Engineering as his speciality. With plenty of experience in medium- and large-scale rural landscape projects, the work he has carried out for the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival has provided an opportunity for him to tackle a not-so-usual aspect of the landscaper’s craft, where garden design is inspired by meaning, dream and aesthetics alone. For him and the garden’s designers, playing with volumes, rhythms, colours and temporalities in order to preserve and better discover the garden was a way of expressing their interpretation of “Flower Power”.

Born in 1994 in a little village in the pre-Pyrenees, Coralie Michel spent her childhood in a privileged environment whose magnificent landscapes are protected and where nature reigns supreme, a background that has instilled her with true passion. Today, being able to organise landscapes that bring humankind into osmosis with nature is a real opportunity. She left her native region when she was 18 and went to study in Angers, at its school of horticulture and landscape engineering. Now in her fifth year, she is specialising in Project Management and Engineering (design and construction). Her varied academic and practical experience has familiarised her with projects on a range of scales, in public spaces, private gardens and larger areas alike. Working on design phases at engineering consultancies as well as onsite during implementation stages has acquainted her with project lifespans, from order to delivery. Her fourth-year placement, at a London company specialising in layout of private gardens in the English capital, aroused an interest in small-scale projects where attentiveness to owners’ needs and expectations is essential. And now, being selected for the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival while still a student is a great opportunity and a real challenge. Putting everything to work, giving the very best of yourself, sharing and exchanging viewpoints with professionals and being part of a team all make for a real learning experience. The momentum a team provides is similar to that she finds in her preferred collective sports, handball and rugby: going forward together in the same direction in order to achieve a goal.

A native of wide open spaces, Guillaume Nouvellon has always been enthralled by the environment around him. Since early childhood, nature’s ingenuity and beauty have been limitless sources of fascination and inspiration. Landscapes, with all their extensive complexity, became nothing less than a revelation. With an eclectic range of interests involving numerous disciplines and challenges, it is through landscape that Guillaume sees humankind’s future. After passing a Science Baccalaureate with Biology and Ecology as his specialities, the logical choice was to enrol at Agrocampus Ouest Angers (INHP) to study landscape engineering. Now, with his training coming to an end with a Master’s in Landscaping specialising in Project Management and Engineering, the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival has provided him with a unique opportunity to join his friends in creating a garden combining inventiveness, aestheticism and technique in the heart of his native region, Loir-et-Cher.