Favoring the Living over Form

The legacy of destruction

Your practice as a landscaper-gardener has led you to develop the concept of “Garden in movement,” that has signaled an evolution in the formal conception of the garden and man’s relationship with nature and the living. Could you explain the genesis of this laisser-faire philosophy to us?

Gardening places us in a permanent relationship with living beings that establish interactions which are essential to maintaining their balance and that do not require the intervention of man. When I was a horticultural student, we were taught mainly about the act of killing: we learnt to cultivate an “interesting” plant and kill all of the other plants, which were de facto considered as “useless” or “inconvenient.” These murderous gestures signaled the beginning of the reorganization and the sterilization of the soil, this extraordinary “machine” that is essential to the establishment of life on the surface. The illusion of mastery has driven us into the bottomless well of ignorance. Nowadays a farmer is unaware of his or her surroundings and the complexity of the systems that govern his or her land. Rather than working intelligently with the principles of nature, it continues to be enough for the farmer to dictate and kill.

Your practice as a landscaper-gardener has led you to develop the concept of “Garden in movement,” that has signaled an evolution in the formal conception of the garden and man’s relationship with nature and the living. Could you explain the genesis of this laisser-faire philosophy to us?

Gardening places us in a permanent relationship with living beings that establish interactions which are essential to maintaining their balance and that do not require the intervention of man. When I was a horticultural student, we were taught mainly about the act of killing: we learnt to cultivate an “interesting” plant and kill all of the other plants, which were de facto considered as “useless” or “inconvenient.” These murderous gestures signaled the beginning of the reorganization and the sterilization of the soil, this extraordinary “machine” that is essential to the establishment of life on the surface. The illusion of mastery has driven us into the bottomless well of ignorance. Nowadays a farmer is unaware of his or her surroundings and the complexity of the systems that govern his or her land. Rather than working intelligently with the principles of nature, it continues to be enough for the farmer to dictate and kill.

The Garden in Movement

The Garden in Movement is a gardening method that favors the living over form. This does not mean that there is an absence of form, but rather that it emerges through gardening, over time, and it changes depending on what the gardener deems important to conserve or to remove. It is not completely laisser-faire but rather a series of minor interventions, in such a way as to work as much as possible with—and as little as possible against—nature. The gardener works on this in an opposing economy of energy, avoiding destruction under the pretext of “cleaning up”! When a plant begins to grow in the middle of a path, it is legitimate to ask the question of whether to modify its route rather than just removing it. All of the plants that settle spontaneously in a garden are worthy of consideration; there are no “weeds.” Formal work comes second then in my approach to space. Most plants choose their own place, they are travelers and wanderers—on the scale of the garden as on the scale of the planet—carried by winds, currents, the pelts of animals, birds, and the soles of feet.

The plants that we are most familiar with, which seem to have always been at our sides, were only introduced very recently. The oaks from druid culture have not been here for eternity for example; they came up from the Iberian peninsula via stolen acorns that were discarded here and there by jays. The coconut, the largest seed in the world, floats. It has expanded its territory, carried along by various currents, but we don’t know exactly where it first appeared. Planetary cross-fertilization is one of evolution’s mechanisms. “Indigenous” and “invasive,” are terms that have no meaning. These cultural considerations don’t take into account the ecosystem as it has functioned since the appearance of life on Earth, regulated by movements and migrations.

Once we take a step back in time and space, we understand that the term “invasive species” is overused. These rapidly developing beings settle as pioneers and their spectacular growth gives the impression that they are colonizing space, but the “environmental response” always finishes by reestablishing balance when it comes to the presence of different species. It is what we call an emerging ecosystem. When the climate changes, as is currently the case for various reasons, it is normal that the geographical distribution of species also changes. Plants that in the past couldn’t develop in certain geographical zones now can, and vice versa. Migrations, essential to survival, are part of the mechanism of evolution.

From its origins, the garden has been a closed space where man cultivates that which he has brought back from elsewhere, that which he has sought out further and further afield accompanied by the progress of technology. The potato, the tomato, the zucchini, or the eggplant—that make up our daily diet—are exotic species. The planet also hosts a self-contained biodiversity that represents our condition of sharing. It behaves like a giant washing machine that recycles all of the elements, in such a way that the water that I am drinking has already been drunk by a number of other beings before it reaches me. This is why it is fundamental to ask oneself how to put the energy that has been taken out of the environment back into it, or how not to pollute the water irreversibly. It is an enormous management project and a political program in itself!

By taking the measure of spatial finitude, planetary cross-fertilization, and the omnipresence of man—who has an impact even where he is not to be found—I have come to the idea of the Planetary Garden. It supposes that each citizen of the planet is a gardener, including mankind in the system of Gaia, something that Lovelock did not necessarily have in mind.

The Third (estate) Landscape: a biodiversity reserve

So the gardener is no longer there to “domesticate”, “tame”, “dictate”, or struggle with”, but rather to “accompany”, “drive”, and “manage” the living. He is not rejected from the “ideal garden” but occupies its center. So why have you made the Île Derborence—a small hill in the center of the Henri-Matisse park in Lille—inaccessible?

The Henri-Matisse park is situated on the edges of the fortifications of the old town, on a former industrial site. It can be accessed via the Roubaix gate, or from the TGV train station, for which the debris from the excavation work was stored on site. In this pile of rubble, there were Vauban bricks, probably from an ancient fortress. I really wanted to reuse this idea of the fortress to question what we have decided to protect today by offering to conserve the pile of debris, allowing nature to establish itself on its summit. Abandoning land is like handing it over to a future forest. The initial idea consisted of accelerating a process of establishing a boreal forest that is the result of a planetary cross-fertilization—like a sample of a future climactic vegetation—but the lack of a budget for planting finally led us to leave nature to develop at its own pace. Staging is a solid base for providing support to a landscape created by nature’s energy. The intention was not to prevent access, but rather to make it into a centerpiece of the theme of the Third (estate) Landscape, on a pedagogical level.

What I call a Third (estate) Landscape corresponds to a biodiversity reserve, a host territory for species that find themselves chased away from many other places. Edges of roadways, wastelands, railway embankments, urban or earthy gaps and crevasses, all of these parcels of land where man does not go, hosting a biodiversity much richer than can be found in fields, in well cared for “green spaces,” sprayed with phytosanitary products or even those of the Douglas forest, where no light penetrates. Once we have understood this, and become aware of our dependence on this diversity, we no longer look at wastelands in the same way. Instead of presenting them as a loss of power over space, an abandonment or neglect, we can on the contrary look at them as a rehabilitation of the space. I called these spaces Third (estate) Landscapes in reference to the pamphlet by the Abbe Siéyès, who at the moment of the Revolution said: “What is this Third-Estate? — Everything — What role has it played to date? — None. — What does it aspire to become? — Something.”

These spaces, are everything, and our future probably depends on them. I would not say that the Third (estate) Landscape “aspires” to become something, because it is not biodiversity which is threatened, but more-so the survival of mankind on this planet. Plants are autotrophic, they synthesize chlorophyll from the sun’s energy, while man finds himself at the end of the food chain. Life came before us, it will continue on without us and plants will cope much better than we will. But it is interesting for us to look differently at these species for our own longevity. A wasteland can be a treasure.

The slow realisation of the “natural genius”.

To valorize the Third (estate) Landscape at the heart of the Henri-Matisse park, we cast raw concrete walls—that look like cliff faces—around the small hill. They make it possible to signal the precious aspect of what it hosts at its summit. The artist Claude Courtecuisse proposed the form of the Island of Antipode for the contours of this jewel, this pedestal, even if we have decided to call the one located in the Henri-Matisse park the “Île Derborence,” in reference to one of the only remaining primeval forests in Europe, located at the top of an inaccessible peak in Switzerland. Of the eight hectares of the Henri-Matisse park, only the 2,500 m2 at the top of the knoll are governed by a total laisser-faire. The “manifesto” aspect of the project aims to raise awareness among the general public about the inaccuracy of associating an abandoned space with a space that is degraded and degrading, but the project was little understood. It was dangerously close to being cancelled a number of times before it saw the light of day, and then it was slammed by the critics as a “useless” and “baffling” wasteland. Trees were planted in front of the walls, hiding the reason for the scenographic enhancement of the primeval forest, which is a stupid thing to do. Pedagogy, education, and awareness-raising are long-term processes that are still ongoing.

Since then, I have often suggested that a managed space should be accompanied by an undeveloped adjoining space, left to its own devices, in such a way as to become a reservoir for hosting species that are deemed “auxiliary” for the gardener, species that help the gardener without asking for anything in return. I feel more and more understood when it comes to these delicate subjects, but it is a matter of a change in vision accompanying a profound cultural change, and this type of change in values always takes a long time to gain ground. We are truly ignorant when faced with the roles and capacities of fauna and flora, which bring with them a feeling of loss of power, even though the living does also work with and for us. Since the 1970s, scientists have brought to light a number of means of communication that exist between plants, through scents, gaseous emissions, electrical and magnetic currents, and various types of waves. All of this is very complex and, for the time being, there is nothing in place that allows us to use this “natural genius.” Gardeners have been aware of the existence of these forms of communication for many years. Their “non-scientific” experiences have allowed them to make associations and to draw conclusions, such as “the leek likes the strawberry,” which has been much derided, despite the fact that it is absolutely true.

Rather than the Anthropocene, you speak of the “Stupidocene.” First we were ignorant, then stupid, and we are now trying to be innovative. What sustainable vision of “progress” should we then give ourselves?

The Anthropocene, as the transformation of the planet due to the action of mankind, began for me with the sedentarization of humans, because, from the very first clearing that was created, the landscape has found itself modified by man. This modification has gained momentum and force with population growth and the increase of available means of action in the field. We have ended up feeling that we can control everything thanks to man’s genius, machines, and products. Industrialization provides an idea of this vision of the world and in my opinion marks the beginning of the Stupidocene. The rupture between man and his environment does not then go back to the development of monotheism. When man represented himself in the image of God, when he broke with this relationship of understanding, observation, and respect that he had maintained with his surroundings so as to position himself “above” nature, he had not yet reached the skin of the Earth. The altering of the biosphere, though vital to the human species, began with progress made in chemistry, the development of destructive products, and Taylorism.

The Stupidocene is the ecstasy of the illusion of mastery. In my own field, we transform landscapes in a spectacular and very violent fashion, we fuse together, we sterilize, we waterproof, we wage war on life. Unlike war, the industry of the Stupidocene does not display a desire to kill, yet it does it anyway with a radical and insidious violence. The number of deaths that have occurred since the beginning of the use of chemical products in agriculture for example is colossal.

In a finite space, with a limited biosphere, growth cannot be spatial in nature. We cannot continue to gnaw upon the skin of the Earth, to eradicate our food supplies, to build cities by taking over fertile lands. Trying to circumvent the problem by setting up vegetable gardens on rooftops is illusory at best. Growth must be turned toward knowledge and understanding. Everyone can be more intelligent, even though the intelligibility of the context is not necessarily a given. My understanding of progress does not correspond to this plunge into ignorance with respect to the environment in which we live, but rather to a better understanding of the complexity of the living that we are part of. This intellectual and immaterial growth does not require occupying the terrain.

This article was initially published in Stream 04 in septembre 2017.

Yann Monel, whose photographs illustrate this article, started out as a gardener before becoming a photographer. He has named his image production structure HUMUS in reference to the fundamental matrix that he observes contently in his garden. These images were produced in a quarry that has been abandoned for 60 years (in the Corniche des Forts forest in north-east Paris).
yannmonel.com