2012 edition - Gardens of delight, gardens of delirium

20. Delirium tremens

published at 27/10/2017

"Delirium tremens", Festival des Jardins 2012 - © E. Sander

The Delirium Tremens garden is indeed born of delirium: a scenography composed of crazed vegetable, mineral and animal ambiences... Accepting this unexpected invitation to follow the path taken by bygone poets, and despite its better judgement, the eye slips through the defences of a consciousness bent on dissimulating the world of delights and deliria. Reason withers away in contact with forbidden plants, flinches to the rhythm of the barriers that fall, and expands into a phantasmagorical dream of exquisite but terrible plants. The garden is alive with visual hallucinations, disorientating and obsessing its visitors, who immerse themselves in it until delirium strikes.

The extravagance of childhood fantasies lies at the garden’s heart, where the scenography calls forth chimerical and shamanistic divagations, following in the footsteps of the great symbolist writers. Unexpected combinations of plants create utopic flights of fancy, Graphics rain down havoc upon the ordinary, conjuring up illusion, and exaltation of the senses plunges us into disequilibrium and hallucination.

DESIGNERS

Marine VIGIER and Émilie DELERUE, DPLG landscape architects, Marie-Laure HANNE, landscape designer, Jérôme JOLY and Frédéric DELCAYROU, gardeners

FRANCE

From left to right: Emilie Delerue, Frédéric Delcayrou, Jérôme Joly, Marie-Laure Hanne and Marine Vigier

Marine Vigier is a DPLG landscaper with a BTS in Landscaping from the Bordeaux ENSAP, member and administrator of the Périgord delegation of the “Maisons Paysannes de France” association (MPF 24). Landscaper in a multidisciplinary network of “designers and researchers” in planning (Human Design Workshop), that develops eco-construction projects through contemporary and responsible architectural/landscaping creation using traditional and ecological materials and making the landscape itself the vehicle for area design.

Emilie Delerue is a DPLG landscaper with a BTS in Horticultural Production from the Bordeaux ENSAP; landscaper at Mandragore (16); end-of-studies project in Chile, bearing on representation and know-how of local populations in Araucania Andina / neighbourhood association “Let’s Build the Wall” project for landscaping, market-gardening and artistic re-appropriation of La Rochelle’s defensive wall. An anthropological and sociological approach for autonomous emancipation of everyday landscapes.

Marie-Laure Hanne is a landscape designer with a degree in Applied Arts and a BTS in Area Design, followed by two years at the Bordeaux ENSAP. An interest in the living environment expressed through area design, with a personal approach that combines landscape, design and the plastic arts. Work and research bound up with her desire to develop eco-design projects that take account of the visual and natural environment alike, along with work on awareness-raising, which seems of particular importance today. Currently working in Avignon, on development of the landscaping department at Griin, a new company that seeks to make gardens accessible to everyone.

Jérôme Joly has been a professional gardener for Dordogne County Council since 2001, having previously worked as team leader in a public works company specialising in floor coverings. An expert in construction in wood, he has created a wide range of wooden walkways, decks and fences on the département’s natural sites. He renovated the little 1860 house in which he lives with his own hands.

Frédéric Delcayrou has been working for Dordogne County Council since 1999. As a member of their “creation” team, he has taken part in the creation of each succeeding temporary garden (one per year) at the Espace Culturel François Mitterrand in Périgueux (24). He built an extension to the wooden-frame house where he lives with his own hands.

DESIGNERS

THE GARDEN'S PLANTS