The Garden History Blog

Trees by Bernard de Lassus

I paid my annual trip to the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire last week. As a laboratory for contemporary garden and landscape design  for nearly 30 years,  and still full of weird and whacky ideas, Chaumont fits the idea of the Silly Season perfectly.

The theme this year was Biomimicry – and don’t worry  I had to think what that meant as well.   But actually it’s a really interesting concept because as the organisers say “Understanding and imitating living systems and, in particular, natural ecosystems is one of the keys to our future.”

What’s a termite nest doing in a contempoary garden?

Biomimicry sees Nature much more than just a resource or a constraint but a source of inspiration for human progress : “Whether you look at the silk of spiders, the organisation of termite mounds or the tendrils of the Virginia creeper or burdock, there are a thousand opportunities to take a leaf out of nature’s book and apply its techniques to the garden” and beyond.

Now that all sounds very serious and worthy so what’s it got to do with the Silly Season? I think that will become clear when we look at some of this year’s temporary gardens but ask yourself first where do dinosaurs lay their eggs  and what would it be like to sit inside a lemon squeezer ?

What species are these exotic looking  birds?

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