Les Botaniques de Varengeville, in Seine-Maritime, October 28 and 29
For a weekend, on October 28 and 29, Varengeville-sur-Mer, near Dieppe, in Seine-Maritime, hosts its Botaniques. Nurseries and exhibitors will take over the meadow around the town hall to offer remarkable plants, fashion tools or beautiful garden books. Conferences, exhibitions (of photographs by the botanist Véronique Mure or the artist Lola G, “Poetree”, at the Michel-Ciry Museum in Varengeville) and signing meetings will follow one another during these two days. And above all, many exceptional gardens, including the Bois de Morville (by the late landscaper Pascal Cribier), the Etang de Launay, the Jardin d’Alexandre, the Vasterival and the Jardin bleu will be open to visits (paid and guided) for the occasion. As for the famous Bois des Moutiers, one of the most beautiful gardens in France, under construction for… four years, it should reopen to visitors in spring 2024.
The garden of the Ferme du Lansau, in Marchiennes, in Hauts-de-France
Former advertising photographer and current landscaper, Frédéric Delesalle designed a 3-hectare garden in 1995 in Marchiennes, in the North, based on a traditional pasture, around the buildings of a ruined farm. It was rehabilitated with talent (and… frugality) by the architect François Andrieux, and fits harmoniously into a seemingly lightly worked plant environment where the trees (pedunculate oaks, hornbeams, maples, beeches or poplars) are now numerous and flourishing. Fascinated by the play of light and shadow, the designer of this garden has created an attractive succession of green rooms or “natural” ponds and water features which welcome living things – amphibians, reptiles, insects and… numerous donkeys, valuable aids in shearing and fertilization. On the occasion of autumn “Private Visits”, this unique garden is open to visitors.
Conferences of the European Institute of Gardens and Landscapes, in Caen
The Château de Bénouville, near Caen, designed by the utopian architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806), houses the European Institute of Gardens and Landscapes. He regularly organizes conferences and meetings on the history of the gardens. The next ones will take place in Caen, Paris and Rouen. In Caen (Saturday, November 4), the writer Marco Martella will present the latest issue of the Jardins magazine, devoted to “foods,” with a conference on the image of the orchard in the work of the English artist William Morris ( 1834-1896) and on its gardens. In Paris (Tuesday November 7), at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, the “gardener” and landscaper Gilles Clément will speak on the theme “Garden and politics” with journalist Frédérique Basset.
