Every year, the world's most innovative garden and landscape designers are invited to the grounds of Chaumont, the famous chateau in the Loire Valley some 125 miles from Paris. Here they create an array of brilliant new gardens, which are on display from May through the summer. The varied and contrasting choice of gardens is arranged by themes which: explore global influences; the specific role of plants; outdoor art; representing time and change; the rapport between gardens and landscapes; and creations of wit and whimsy. In this book, commentaries explore the themes behind the gardens, their impact on designers and the public's reaction to and interaction with these experimental ideas. Plant lists and plans provide practical support for those interested in adapting the ideas or re-creating their own gardens. This volume includes works by an international selection of rising designers from Japan to the Netherlands, as well as world-famous artists such as Louis Benech, Judy and David Drew, Lynden B. Miller, Fernando Caruncho, Peter Latz, Adriaan Geuze and the Italian Land I Agency.
For Garden Week in Provence information, see www.susanwornertours.com. For updates on Louisa Jones' books and activities, see the blog at http://louisajones.wordpress.com/
Canadian born Louisa Jones has been gardening in southern France since 1975 when she and her husband bought the old farmhouse they still inhabit. She has written some thirty books about contemporary French gardens, recently specializing in Mediterranean regions. For her first illustrated book, Gardens in Provence (1992) Louisa visited more than two hundred gardens of all styles and sizes. She found that, in the Mediterranean, there is no separation between ornamental and useful or productive gardening. Traditional Mediterranean gardening is "multiple": many pleasures, many uses for all seasons. Like Mediterranean cuisine, it is locally based and economical, but capable of great refinement; pleasure-giving, healthy and accessible to all. It has proven its capacity to maintain a durable partnership with the land. Most recently, Louisa Jones has been exploring vernacular Mediterranean landscapes, worked and fashioned by humankind for millenia, that are today biodiversity hotspots and an inspiration to gifted artists. Louisa has also published two books with leading French ecologist, Gilles Clément. She writes in both English and French, and gardens every day. She also organizes visits to private designer gardens around Avignon in April and October.
