The topic of the 30th edition of the Festival International des Jardins in Chaumont-sur-Loire was: “The ideal garden”!
IDEAL: from late Latin idealis to Latin idea: “archetype, thought, idea”
GARDEN: Indo-European root cart(o), garto: “protection”
All the doors are locked! There are four golden doors at the threshold into the garden. Children, small people, wheelchair users, Dirk Nowitzkis, everybody has a door with a keyhole at eye level. But what is behind the doors? If you look through the keyhole, the garden appears inside the letters “Liberté”! The garden is: freedom!
A work that opens the view to the wonderfully paradoxical, metaphorical space that a garden can be – somewhere between protection and freedom.
One of the best comments on our work, which was one of 20 gardens in Chaumont: a group approaches the garden. One man is enthusiastic and says: “Great, here the toilets are not divided by gender but by body size: that’s diversity!”
