2019 edition - Gardens of paradise

Jardin de paradis

#jardinéternel

Festival International des Jardins

Imagine a garden that doesn’t need watering or maintenance, free from disease. Paradise, right? A garden that you would pass on to your great-grandchildren as if you had just designed it, without any effort. With plastic, there is no need to water, nor prune, and it is colourful all year round. Omnipresent in our current landscapes, this material can be modified at will. But at what cost?

It takes an eternity to decompose, estimated at 400 years. The eternal garden is a reflection on this alarming issue. The garden is made up of a “jungle” of foliage combining ground-cover plants with a few taller features. This combination highlights the aerial structure built using stakes which are connected by ropes anchored to the ground. The ropes support branches embellished with purple plastic bags. Soft mounds in the centre of the path invite the visitor to sit to experience a new viewpoint.

DESIGNERS

Claire BIGOT, landscape engineer, and Marie BIGOT, student

FRANCE

Claire Bigot lives in Grenoble, she is a landscape engineer (graduate of Agrocampus Ouest, Angers) and software developer. Originally from Beauce, Claire studied Agronomy before specialising in Landscape Engineering. She then spent a few years working for different studios on projects of varying sizes (urban parks, ecodistricts, playgrounds and landscape impact assessments) and in various contexts (the countryside of Champagne, Alpine valleys and the Slovenian Styria region). In 2015, she learnt to code. Currently, she works for a web agency as a developer and devotes time to her microenterprise that designs external spaces: Point ligne espace.

Marie Bigot is a student of Product Design at the Paris National Graduate School of Decorative Arts. Coming from an agricultural background, she is interested in issues related to landscape design and spatial organisation from the perspective of social and economic activities, as well as from a purely artistic perspective. After an internship with the Yes We Camp association that develops projects for the temporary rehabilitation of urban wastelands, she is now passionate about wooden constructions integrated into the landscape. Her projects, of all kinds, often question the relationship with time, heritage or transmission.