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2013 edition - Gardens of sensations
16

Qui s’y frotte, s’y pique !

The garden

Qui s’y frotte, s’y pique !. (You’ll sting yourself if you rub it!). The garden is somewhere our senses are fully alert – for better, but also for worse...
We would be wrong to think that a garden is only a place for pleasure. A merciless battle is being waged there on a daily basis – we clear thistles, select, kill and eradicate. It’s a highly sensitive area where literal little pests harass our senses with complete impunity. Some kick up a literal stink, others latch on and won’t let go and others still quite disgust us. There are hairy ones, foul-smelling ones, oozing ones, ones that break wind, sting or are quite simply unsightly.
As hardened warriors and fine tacticians, these plants have developed a powerful war arsenal for gaining a choice position in the garden. The public is invited to lay down their arms and hoist the white flag here to take the time instead to admire the green genius and defence mechanisms developed by these pests.
Like a marching army steeled to conquer new spaces (fallow land, embankments on the side of the road or flower beds of the most beautiful gardens), the plants get closer and closer to us. In the bottom of the garden, tightly packed rows of sentinels, solemn in their black uniforms, stand guard, bayonets by their sides. There are five units of solidly armed soldiers ready to attack our touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste head-on.
The green fighters shall not fall! But beware, whoever rubs them will get stung – all in good nature of course!

Designers

Claire MUNIER, government-qualified landscape architect and Marine PUGIN, landscape architect
FRANCE
 

From left to right: Claire Munier and Marine Pugin

Claire Munier is a government-qualified landscape architect. A graduate of the National Higher School of Landscaping in Versailles, she is interested in everyday landscapes and implements projects designed to serve users of “ordinary” nature. She has participated in creation of a number of landscaping projects in France, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Russia – out-of-the-ordinary experiences that convinced her that the user’s involvement in a project’s installation ensures its repetition and perpetuation. She is also developing artistic practices based on cartography and graphic interpretation of a project’s implementation, using embroidery as her chosen medium. She is currently working for the Radar agency, as well as spending time on design of private and community gardens in collaboration with Marine Pugin.

Marine Pugin is a landscape architect. A graduate of the Higher School of Garden and Landscape Architecture in Paris, with a 2nd-year Masters in Cultural Projects in the Public Space from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, she is interested in questions of development and in the relationship between arts, cultures, populations and territories. In search of alternatives and commitment, her approach is both explorative and participative, and her practice is built around variations of scale and implementation (between installations, temporary gardens, and private and public commissions), going back and forth between design and creation of landscaping projects. She works in collaboration with Claire Munier on projects stemming from private commissions, one example being the collaborative management of a garden for the Murs à Pêches association in Montreuil.

THE GARDEN'S PLANTS

Ailanthus altissima
Alliaria petiolata
Allium ursinum
Amaranthus caudatus
Arctium lappa
Artemisia absinthium
Ballota nigra
Carex atrata
Carex pendula
Chelidonium majus
Dipsacus fullonum
Echinops bannaticus
Euphorbia lathyris
Festuca arundinacea
Galium aparine
Geranium robertianum
Gleditsia triacanthos
Helleborus foetidus
Onopordum acanthium
Polygonum aviculare
Prunus spinosa
Psoralea bituminosa
Pteridium aquilinum
Rosa canina
Rubus fruticosus
Salvia glutinosa
Urtica dioica
Urtica urens
Valeriana officinalis
Verbascum thapsus

GARDEN CREATED WITH SUPPORT FROM

Scierie Gaudelas
Pauline Delforge
Ségolène Fliche
Armand Cami
Valentin Szejnman