14. le trône des fleurs

The garden is a kingdom that welcomes seasoned and budding gardeners alike, inviting them to make a colourfully sensuous journey to the throne itself, whose ascension symbolises the sharing of power between flower and gardener.
Visitors make their way up a coloured wooden walkway, skirt the flower-emblazoned banners and take in the garden at a single glance. There, the Throne of Flowers, a sculptural evocation of the famous "Iron Throne”, beckons visitors along the pathway to the platform… perhaps to ascend the throne!
The pathway floats above the rock garden, a reconciliation of the wild and the cultivated, guarantee of a powerful garden, whose self-sufficiency ensures its sustainability. Plants offer up their exuberant pink, mauve, white and yellow flowers, emerging here and there, alone or grouped together, from a mineral surfacing of pebbles.
After climbing two steps announcing that “Summer is coming”, visitors approach the Throne of Flowers, which bristles with a multitude of tools recalling the “heroic deeds” of gardeners.
Comfortably seated on the Throne of Flowers, the King and Queen of the moment need do no more than admire and delight in the rock garden’s harmonious elegance.

Designers

Thibault ADAM, landscape designer and gardener, Yoann MOLARD-AUCLAIR, gardener and landscape designer, and Rémi BOUTIN, set designer and cabinetmaker
FRANCE

From left to right: Rémi Boutin, Thibault Adam and Yoann Molard-Auclair

Thibault Adam
"I started out as a landscaper and then went on to specialise in landscape architecture, a field in which I’ve been evolving over the past few years, around questions to do with public spaces in France and abroad. I’ve been freelance for two years now, and divide my time and my designer’s craft between public projects, private gardens and ephemeral gardens… I’m very much aware of questions bearing on societies and environment, and I’m certain the garden is one of the main springboards to “living well together and living well in an urban environment”. So these days I tend to specialise in designing urban gardens with social vocations, of real ecological use and contributing to a poetic renaturation of our cities. At the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival, the “Summer Is Coming” garden project lets me put nature on a pedestal and extol the merits of gardens from all horizons.”

Yoann Molard-Auclair
"As a gardener and landscape designer who attended a vocational secondary school and went on to study landscape architecture, I like imagining and implementing landscaping projects, going from design to realisation in a holistic approach that combines human relations, the arts, design, knowledge of the plant kingdom, and so on. I’ve a real love of plants, which seem to me to be the basis of any garden or public space, I like getting my hands into the soil. Putting my ideas into practice helps me develop in-depth knowledge invaluable to designing gardens, whether shared, therapeutic-medicinal, edible or whatever. It’s a reflection of my committed approach, focusing on “useful” gardens rather than simply “decorative” gardens. Gardening is not just a practice, it’s also (and above all!) a way of life.”

Rémi Boutin
"After training as a cabinetmaker, I worked for various companies in sectors having to do with woodworking, including restoration and preservation of antique furniture, layout and installation of joinery, manufacture of wooden-framework houses, and design and creation of furniture. For the last 8 years, I’ve been property master at the Lyon Opera House, where I design and create props, stage furniture and special effects. Plants, trees and forests are a passion of mine, and being able to take part in this competition is a way for me to combine my two main interests: set design and nature.”