Ecology 2011 Archive: Sculptillonnage

Gardens of the Future • The Happy Art of Biodiversity
“The garden is a celebration of the diversity of people and nature, of living species,
of their coexistence and of the necessary balance between them.”

SCULPTILLONNAGE
‘. . . a dreamlike universe’ with Claude Pasquer

Created by Claude Pasquer and Corinne Julhiet-Detroyat for Domaine de Chaumont sur-Loire’s 20th International Garden Festival, Sculptillonnage reveals a generosity of heart and art in a wondrous, life-giving interpretation of the Festival’s theme: ‘Gardens of the Future or the Happy Art of Biodiversity.’

As to ‘the Happy Art of Biodiversity,’ the Festival affirms: “It is biodiversity that gives us the pleasure of discovery, the beauty of landscapes, the meeting of languages and the richness of exchanges. It makes the world a delight and fosters the possibility of a shared world arising out of our differences.”

On behalf of ‘Gardens of the Future,’ Domaine de Chamount-sur-Loire notes: “The garden is both a source and an end in itself, the expression of nature in its original form, of transformation and organization, of utility and pleasure, and thus all on its own brings together all the richness of the world, everything nature gives us and all that knowledge and history have brought in terms of transformations, organization and rites, creativity and expression over the centuries.

Sculptillonnage’s twin challenges — combining artistic creation and sustainable development, and glorifying the Gardener's role in biodiversity — are imaginatively and soundly well met.

Claude Pasquer, is a government approved landscape architect with a diploma from the Ècole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage [National Higher Institute for Landscape] in Versailles, who has been working professionally in landscaping for 30 years and more particularly, in development and restoration work in protected areas. He is involved in the provision of vocational training at the Versailles School and is in charge of the ´Croquis de Jardin’ [Garden Sketch] course. For 8 years he has been working on reinventing Garden Sculpture, with his favourite medium being a simple material: hexagonal wire netting. He shapes it, cuts it and compresses it to give life to a new vocabulary. His approach is part of a dynamic process moving in the direction of "natural" gardening and sustainable development.

Corinne Julhiet-Detroyat, is a landscape architect with a diploma from the Ècole Nationale SupÈrieure du Paysage [National Higher Institute for Landscape] in Versailles, who gradually specialised in the gardens of Provence, up to the point where she put down her roots in the area around Vaucluse. Her initial training as a psychologist and her experience of over 25 years as a company director served as a framework for her to pay more attention to nature and listen to it more carefully.  The constraints of this climate and the slope of the land have given her a pretext to reveal space in a different way from the standard garden models, to combine internal and external landscape, by seeking out rustic plants, by economising on watering and by presenting old objects and giving them new life ´in the gardenª. Her priority is respect for the ProvenÁal landscape, with its dry stone wall terraces known as 'restanques', its stones and its views of the Luberon.