2018 Edition: Gardens of Thought

12. Le chemin de Mélété

published at 12/03/2018

Le chemin de Mélété, Festival International des Jardins 2018 - © Éric Sander

How do you show the specificity of the human species, of self-aware beings endowed with the power to reason? How do you make the invisible experiences that resonate in each and every one of us visible? How do you create a figurative rendering of the intricacies of minds constantly swayed by their environment?

It is these questions that this garden tries to answer by providing a physical experience representing the way our minds work; a journey bursting with ideas, feelings and thoughts: dreamy thoughts, structuring thoughts, crazy thoughts and melancholy thoughts.

Represented by selected plant shapes and associations, such moods assail and immerse us in turn as we make our way through the garden.

Guided by and under the benevolent protection of Melete, the Greek Muse of exercise and meditation, visitors climb up onto a promontory, like anchorites, where they are invited to step back and look down.

Taking the time for an overall view that puts things in their right perspective, ridding oneself of base thoughts and emptying the mind are all essential steps for visitor on the road of thought. For that’s also exactly what gardens are for.

DESIGNERS

Oriane GUILLEMET, landscape engineer, and Maeva DEPARIS, State architect

FRANCE

Oriane Guillemet qualified as a landscape engineer in 2010 after following a Franco-German “double degree” course: half her studies were carried out at Agrocampus Ouest (INHP) and largely focused on plant sciences and project management, and the other half at the Fachhochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf, concentrating on large-scale spatial-planning projects in urban areas. In late 2017, she set up her own landscaping design studio, after spending seven years with a Paris agency, gaining experience that helped her develop her own philosophy on design and layout of open spaces and expertise in project supervision and management.

Maeva Deparis is a State architect accredited to exercise her profession in her own name (HMONP). She graduated from the Paris-Belleville National Higher School of Architecture in 2010, and again in 2015. Her studies included an international exchange year spent in Santiago de Chili, at Chili University’s Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo. She has since worked for several Paris architectural agencies, on projects bearing on housing, public facilities and public spaces. She first met Oriane Guillemet in 2014 and found they had a shared love of dancing. In 2017, having so much in common, they decided to compete for the 27^th edition of the Chaumont-sur-Loire International Garden Festival.