Orticulture

This year's theme at the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur Loire celebrates the weed.

09/24/2003
Orticulture
If you travel to France between June and October, you have no excuse to miss the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire. Each year, horticulturists, designers, and architects from around the world are invited to create gardens celebrating a certain theme on the grounds of one of the Loire Valley's most magnificent chateaux. Last year it was eroticism in the garden; this year, the weed or Mauvaise herbe!, as the poster puts it.

Mauvaise herbe! translates literally as "bad herb", but one can't help thinking of the English expression, "bad seed." All the gardens at this year's festival question our concept of weed, in a rich variety of ways that are thought-provoking, humorous, touching, clever, stylish, magical, and mind-expanding.

One of the most memorable gardens this year is Orticulture. When you realize that France's best-loved, most-hated, and most ubiquitous weed is the ortie--or stinging nettle--the humor of the name becomes obvious. Orticulture as a garden is extremely stylish, from a design point of view, and extraordinarily thought-provoking. Looking at this garden, we reflect not only on the human strictures we place on nature, but on their relative value.

The garden consists of a purposely sterile central space that is surrounded by a boardwalk. Along the inner border of the space are isolated, raised galvanized planters, each containing a single weed. Serpentine steel and copper irrigation heads over each planter evoke the roses of watering cans and all the garden tradition implicit in that symbol--but in an eerie, slightly sinister way. A galvanized metal sign lists in beautiful handscript the plant's common and scientific names, along with all the butterflies it hosts. The effect is almost that of an epitaph to each weed. Meanwhile, the simple signage is a marvelous inspiration: simple galvanized metal hand-lettered with black paint.

The outer periphery of the boardwalk is the complete and utter opposite of the interior. Here, weeds commingle in marvelous abandon, as it is their nature to do. Evening primrose, chicory, pennyroyal, and Queen Anne's lace fraternize joyfully. Colors, textures, and fragrances interweave in an exciting tapestry. And here, in contrast to the sterile isolation of the "cultured" weeds, the plants abound with insect life--bees, butterflies, and other beneficials are busily visiting the blossoms.

This part of Orticulture has touches of wry humor as well. In homage (or mockery?) of the clipped dwarf boxwood hedge that surrounds almost every French flower bed, these riotous gardens are enclosed by mini-hedges of carefully clipped...nettles. And the names of the weedy denizens of these flower beds are elegantly scrolled on galvanized markers, identifying them as befits all horticultural specimens of note.

Scroll back up to the main photo at the head of this article. Recognize those purple flowers? Are you gasping in horror at the thought that anyone should suggest celebrating this plant in a garden? Should you be? Orticulture makes you ponder these questions.

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Products of Interest:
Average soils--French Queen Anne's lace
Average to dry soils--Wild blue chicory
Average soils--Corn cockle
Average to wet soils--Wild pennyroyal

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