Gilles Clément

Gilles Clément lives in a house in la Creuse that he constructed completely himself. He has a large property, where he observes his various experiments and gardens. The tour consisted of myself, Yvan, and two other people who were at the conference. He is an incredibly nice and thoughtful person, and welcomes people to his home often. For the tour and the conference, everyone spoke in French, so I will do my best to translate.


This is an area where M. Clément dug up the existing soil, to expose the bedrock. He allowed some soil to remain, and then left it be. The purpose was to see what plants would settle in there, and which ones would thrive naturally.


A tree that tipped over during a storm. He left it there, to see what would happen, and another shoot came up from the existing trunk. There are several others on the property that have done the same. Rather than removing fallen trees, he has allowed nature to run its course, and produce something quite remarkable.


He has a prairie where the soils are quite different, producing naturally different vegetation.

He made a loft, where he can look out over some of his property, and this is where we sat for a talk. The other guests posed questions regarding his strong political stance, similar to the conference. Rather than me explain his political views, please visit his website. http://www.gillesclement.com After this, I asked him about the jardin en mouvement, and its management principles. He explained that the intent is for the gardener to be the one who follows, not leads, in the garden. This promotes a richer understanding of natural processes with regards to nature in its context of today, here and now. I also asked him about the friche , where post industrial and urban lands are left, and what we can do to move forward with ideas of the jardin en mouvement with regards to these spaces. His answer was to follow what is happening now, that there is an incredible amount of biodiversity at places like this. So the landscape architect goes with the intention of following while creating, rather than dominating. I find this to be of interest, particularly in the realm of management. If we understand what happens naturally, now, then we wont have to have ridiculous management practices to keep landscapes in a static manner.

I found him to be a very nice and thoughtful person, who took time to reflect and consider points of view. His personality seems to come through very well through the means of his gardens and experiments. He has an incredibly rich knowledge of horticulture and biology, and prefers to actually make things, rather than making drawings of things.