DOMAINE DE CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DES JARDINS 2017 20 APRIL 05 NOVEMBER WWW.DOMAINE-CHAUMONT.FR T. +33 (0) 254 209 922 ric Sander É Photo © DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE CENTRE OF ARTS AND NATURE 26TH INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page 5 I. 2017 EDITION - “FLOWER POWER” Page 7 II. GREEN CARDS GIVEN TO Page 9 Rebecca Louise-Law Alexis Tricoire Plantes et Cultures Jean-Philippe Weimer, “La serre lumineuse” III. THE 2017 JURY Page 19 Coline Serreau, President of the 2017Jury Members of the 2017 Jury IV. THE FESTIVAL GARDENS Page 23 V. NEW IN 2017 Page 47 The “Jardin de sous-bois” (Blois School of Landscaping / UNEP) The River of Pale Tulips The Promenade of Blue Irises / Baptism of a new clematis “Flower Power” photographs by Éric Sander “Flower Power” video by Luzia Simon VI. THE PERMANENT GARDENS Page 55 VII. THE DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE Page 59 1. A multifaceted mission 2. A range of objectives 3. The Domaine’s leading actors 4. Diary for 2017 VIII. UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO RESPECT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT Page 67 IX. PARTNERS / CERTIFICATIONS AND NETWORKS Page 71 X. USEFUL INFORMATION Page 79 XI. SELECTION OF VISUALS AVAILABLE FOR THE PRESS Page 83 www.domaine-chaumont.fr 3 DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE CENTRE OF ARTS AND NATURE 26TH INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire receives over 400,000 visitors a year and has hosted the International Garden Festival since 1992. Renewing itself with each passing year, the event serves to reflect and provide an overview of current trends and changes in landscaping and garden creation. In 25 seasons, over 700 gardens have been created on the estate – prototypes of tomorrow’s green spaces, as the Festival acts as a nursery for talents bringing fresh ideas and an often out-of-kilter vision, and revitalising those “living artworks”, our gardens. The diversity, creativity and quality of projects combining art, science, botany and poetry have helped establish the Festival’s reputation worldwide, making it an unmissable rendezvous for the presentation of works by landscapers, architects, designers, scenographers and gardeners of all ages and disciplines coming from all four corners of the world: Asia, Africa, across the Atlantic and, of course, Europe. Inspired and inspiring, every year and with equal measures of humour and audaciousness, they offer us new ways of seeing, experiencing and creating gardens. They also invite us to respect our planet and live on it with poetry in our hearts. Chaumont-sur-Loire’s secret lies in tireless invention and reinvention. Wide open to the world and its evolutions, garden observatory and laboratory alike, the International Garden Festival is celebrating its 26th birthday this year and invites us to discover the many powers that flowers possess, essential not only for their bewitching beauty but also for the key role they play in the survival of our species. Chantal Colleu-Dumond Director, International Garden Festival 4 www.domaine-chaumont.fr 5 DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE CENTRE OF ARTS AND NATURE 26TH INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL I. 2017 EDITION : FLOWER POWER / LE POUVOIR DES FLEURS 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 21st 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) 6 www.domaine-chaumont.fr 7 DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE CENTRE OF ARTS AND NATURE 26TH INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL II. GREEN CARDS , Festival des Jardins, 2016 © Eric Sander , Festival Je reste 8 www.domaine-chaumont.fr 9 DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE 2017 INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL GREEN CARDS REBECCA LOUISE-LAW A London-based artist who trained at Newcastle University’s School of Arts and Cultures in England, Rebecca Louise-Law has worked with natural materials for LE JARDIN PRÉSERVÉ 17 years, a practice that involves constant exploration of STABLES CANOPY the relationship between nature and humankind. Her work includes philosophical and spiritual aspects: each flower is selected for a particular reason. The copper wire she uses to fix them in place has become her trademark. Colours are chosen and organised with meticulous care. The artist has exhibited her installations in a wide variety of venues, from galleries to churches: her “The Flower Garden Display’d” project saw her suspending a total of 4,600 flowers from the vaulted ceiling of a church. Rebecca Louise-Law is known for the way she transforms space into colourful poetic universes by suspending “I like to capture and cherish small beautiful natural hundreds or even thousands of flowers within its confines. objects to create artworks that can be observed without Rebecca Louise Law’s sculptures exalt the beauty of the pressure of time. Preserving, appreciating, celebrating natural change. Her works evolve as nature takes its and sharing the beauty of the Earth with the world is what course, providing an alternative concept of beauty by motivates me”. Rebecca Louise-Law embracing preservation and deterioration alike. Rebecca Louise-Law works with fresh and dried flowers, “The power of Rebecca’s installations lies in their perpetual allowing the work to evolve naturally. Her installations transmutation. The living flowers move exquisitely through are designed to last indefinitely, with each component the natural stages of deterioration: they wilt, lose their attached individually, and bear witness to the changes of colour and dry. By leading visitors along this path of shape and colour produced as time goes by. deterioration, Rebecca extends the perceived limits of the beauty of flowers, imbuing them with an artistic value that makes them more than mere objects of decoration”. Amanda Krampf, Director of the Chandran Gallery Double page : “Le jardin préservé”, installation de Rebecca Louise-Law pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2017 © Éric Sander 10 www.domaine-chaumont.fr www.domaine-chaumont.fr 11 DOMAIN OF CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE 2017 INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL GREEN CARDS ALEXIS TRICOIRE A leading light in the field of plant design, Alexis Tricoire Saint-Cloud Park, the Tuileries Garden and the Floralies in has spent the last ten years and more rethinking the role Nantes – as well in more permanent fashion in private and that living nature plays in our society. His work focuses public places alike: offices, shops, shopping centres and LA PLANÈTE EN ÉBULLITION on the study of a new form of urbanisation where the link railway stations where his creations add to the aesthetic FESTIVAL GARDENS with nature is restored by his approach as an artist and appeal and wellbeing of indoor and outdoor areas alike. designer. His studio Végétal Atmosphère was set up in 2009 and is a Well-known for the impact his multisensory technological true laboratory in which he and his team design vegetable mises-en-scène have on the public, he is regularly invited innovations intended to enhance the environment. He to design objects and monumental sculptures throughout has just been awarded the 2017 Janus “Espace de Vie” the world. He brings an innovative eye to each project, label for his “Botanic Twist” garden bench, produced by committed both to wellbeing in urban environments and TF Urban. protection of the planet. A garden/manifesto designed to evoke the urgent nature is preserved and where design and art try to bring problem of climate imbalance and raise awareness of innovative aesthetic and botanical solutions to nurture His creativity has been expressed through exhibitions future solutions for our planet’s wellbeing. our hopes. in such high-prestige public spaces as the Grand Palais during COP21, the National Museum of Natural History, It has become all too clear: with urbanisation given free the Ministry of the Environment, Château de Versailles, rein, the signs of climate imbalance are on the increase; Double page : global warming, rising waters, deforestation, waste and © Alexis Tricoire pollution are becoming part of our daily lives.