2017 edition
Flower power

In every age and civilisation since the dawn of time, in art and in literature, flowers real and figurative have played an essential role in the human imagination. There can be no-one who is unaware of their infinite variety, formal perfection, mystery and symbolic power. Their beauty, their scent, their brilliance, their colour and even their flavour bewitch the senses. As eternal as they are ephemeral, delicate and powerful alike, whether garden-grown or wild, flowers harbour the power to fascinate, to charm, to cure, and even to kill.

And, not so long ago, didn’t people also hope that they had the power to “change the world, change our souls, change our hearts”?

How will the 21^st century’s gardens regard, use and make the utmost of the extraordinary and unfailing capacities, the incredible power of grace, that flowers command?

Radically new, contemporary and highly original scenographies, seeking to amaze, bewitch and conjure up dreams, finding fresh ways of combining flower varieties and making the utmost of them – this is what the 2017 edition’s designers have achieved, acting alongside nurseries of excellence to present a range of rare and truly outstanding blooms, their shapes as unexpected as their colours and their scents.

Drawing on the wellsprings of a resolutely present-day imagination and making use of all available technical possibilities, the 2017 edition will take you from discovery to discovery, from invention to invention. Passing from one garden to the next, you will come across unprecedented scenarios, mises en scène of hitherto unseen flowers brought together in the most unexpected fashions, playing on accumulation and surprises of every shape and size. Fantasy, luxuriousness, abundance and wonder will all be there to greet you, in the heart of audacious, innovative and dreamlike gardens.

“Every flower that opens, you might say opens my eyes. Inadvertently. Without there being any act of will on either side. By opening, it opens something else much more than itself. It’s sensing this that surprises you and brings you joy”. Philippe Jaccottet, “Aux liserons des champs” (To Field Bindweed Flowers)