08. LE JARDIN DES GRAINES
Green card given to the Botanical Gardens of France
This garden presents a diversified collection of plants that is representative of botanical gardens, along with a collection of seeds and wood sculptures of huge seeds by the artist-botanist Didier Rousseau-Navarre.
The purpose of botanical gardens is to constitute and conserve collections of living plants. They also collect seeds for storage in their seed banks and recording in a document entitled Index seminum, for French and international botanical gardens tend above all to trade in seeds. Through this trading network the various gardens are able to enrich and diversify their plant collections.
The seed is probably the strongest semantic representation there is for talking about life. It contains an entire living plant within, we're talking forests, fields - landscapes even. No matter whether they are microscopic or massive like the coco de mer, seeds come in a whole range of colours and shapes, with all kinds of decorative markings, which also bestow upon them undeniable aesthetic value. They scatter through the air, on land and in water in quite astonishing ways.
Here, the sieve - a botanist's essential tool for sorting seeds - is used as a building block in the garden space. Accumulated and assembled like mashrabiya decorative window screens, the sieves provide transparent spaces through which successive grounds can be created and samples of seeds can be presented in the manner of insect collections.
DESIGNERS
- bringing together public and private botanical gardens in France and French-speaking countries as well as the legal entities and people who work within them, irrespective of their rank or position, so as to:
- increase the number of opportunities they have for working together to extend and promote the Botanical Gardens, hone their knowledge and share ideas, experiences and plants from their collections,
- help conserve endangered biotopes and plants across all geographical areas and provide consultancy services in development projects that involve the environment,organise seminars, study days and conferences, to disseminate new knowledge, and support their educational role,
- plan and officially arrange participation or coordination with the public authorities and other similar associations in France or abroad,
- provide counsel and defence for the staff regulations of Botanical Gardens,
- help to design or develop other Botanical Gardens worldwide.
