GILLES CLÉMENT: THE ENTROPIC GARDENER

GILLES CLÉMENT:

THE ENTROPIC GARDENER

Fanny & Mark D’ONOFRIO

The French polymath Gilles Clément is a botanist, an entomologist, and a landscape architect – as well as one of the most prominent garden theorists of the 20th century. An iconoclast who eschews labels, he considers himself both a planetary gardener and a tactical ecologist. Clément is behind the garden of resistance movement, which embraces weeds and self-sown seeds and their restorative ecological role in transforming neglected or disturbed spaces, such as brownfields, road shoulders / verges, and other terrain vague wastelands, into resilient post-industrial garden sanctuaries.

EARLY LIFE: AN EXPLORER BOTANIST & ENTOMOLOGIST

Clément was born in 1943 in rural French Argenton-sur-Creuse. During the late ‘60s, he studied agricultural engineering, botany, and entomology at the prestigious Versailles School of Horticulture, idyllically located in the King’s Kitchen Garden (Le Potager du Roi) near the Palace of Versailles. Upon graduation, he obtained a traveling post with the French National Museum of Natural History documenting rare flora and butterflies throughout Africa, Madagascar, and South America. During these missions, he observed and cataloged thousands of mostly nocturnal butterflies and even discovered a new eponymous species (Buneopsis clementi) in Cameroon. He retained this position for most of the ‘70s.

TURNING POINT: THE FOUNDATION OF THE GARDEN OF RESISTANCE

Two events changed his life.

First, during his years as an itinerant botanist, he soured on the Museum’s rigid practice of cataloging and hoarding as many species as possible without regard for their underlying features or ecology. He viewed this as institutional boasting that turned scientists into mere collectors and trophy hunters. Even the Latin name of his eponymous butterfly, in his view, didn’t convey any useful biological information.  

Second, he nearly died after using a homemade pesticide to kill aphids in his garden. As he likens it, “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.” [see below article, Favoring the Living over Form]

In 1977, he bought a plot of abandoned and denuded farmland in the rural region of his childhood to experiment with his idea of the spontaneous growth of self-sown seeds. To test this theory, Clément built both a stone house and a rustic wood-platform observatory himself, and then left his garden to its own devices for seven years, the requisite period he believed it would take for his garden to transform into a forest. With minimal guidance or interference, he mostly mowed, scythed, and pruned; and otherwise refused to use any chemicals, supplemental water, or mechanical equipment. This experiment proved successful: His degraded farmland soon transformed into a lush Eden, composed of self-sown willow, oak, hornbeam, smoke bush, wild roses, foxgloves, mullein, and even the infamous giant hogweed. 

La Vallée, his name for this ascetic sanctuary, quickly became a viral pilgrimage destination for his friends and classmates from the School of Horticulture, and later more established landscape designers and architects. And so, in 1979, only two years after he had begun his experiment, the prestigious Versailles School of Landscape Architecture (ENSP) invited him to teach his novel landscape design approach. He’s still teaching today.

LEGACY: A RECOGNIZED LANDSCAPE THEORIST AND DESIGNER

At the Versailles School of Landscape Architecture, he updated the traditional curriculum to include cross-disciplinary courses on horticulture, entomology, and ecology.

He also spent this time writing about the spontaneous growth movement and introduced three novel landscape theories in the process: “the garden in movement,” “the third landscape,” and “the planetary garden.” His first theory, “the garden in movement,” the result of his own garden experiment, redefines the role of the gardener as an observer and a guide who works with, as opposed to oppresses, nature, and by extension, entropy. His second theory, “the third landscape,” celebrates neglected or disturbed spaces, such as brownfields, abandoned lots, and other post-industrial habitats, as ecological incubators and pockets of resistance for hardy organisms that can survive and even thrive in urban ruins. His third theory, “the planetary garden,” is a plea for borderless biodiversity, as no seed is truly native since we don’t know the geographical origins of most plants.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he gained international recognition when the French government commissioned him to design public parks and botanical gardens. Most of his projects, such as André-Citroën Park (Parc André-Citroën), the Third-Landscape Garden (Jardin du Tiers-Paysage), Derborence Island (Île Derborence), and the Great Arch Gardens (Jardins de l'Arche) were brownfields or abandoned spaces that he had used to test his theories in the civic sphere.

André-Citroën Park is his most renowned project. It took Clément and his collaborators almost ten years (1985-1992) to transform this once abandoned Citroën car factory site along the Seine River into one of the largest 20th-century public parks in Paris. Designed as a transition between rural and urban landscapes, the central part, with its massive lawn, reflecting pools, and towering greenhouses, is reminiscent of an ancient forest clearing. At the periphery, in a collection of dense pocket gardens, Clément plays not only with color – i.e., white gardens for white flowers (anemone, iberis, gaura, etc.), black gardens for dark foliage (pinus, quercus, rhus, etc.) – but also with movement, as each grass reacts differently to the force of the wind. The pocket gardens are therefore always changing, and the gardeners have free rein to alter the original design to protect and respect self-sown seeds.

The Third-Landscape Garden in St-Nazaire is a more contemporary post-industrial example of his garden of resistance. In particular, Clément observed that the concrete rooftop of his site, a derelict WW2 submarine pen, was covered with self-sown seeds brought by strong offshore winds and migratory birds. He preserved and even encouraged this spontaneous growth to illustrate the ecological diversity of the Loire Estuary and the harsh Atlantic coast. He planted aspen, stonecrop, and horsetail – robust plants capable of surviving on a concrete surface – and then propagated self-sown seeds in a “garden of labels,” or a garden with a thin substrate of soil that captures seeds carried by the wind, the birds, or the outsoles of visitors.

His most radical project is Derborence Island, a reclaimed ecological folly within Henri Matisse Park (Parc Henri Matisse) in Lille. Clément transformed a rubble mound – the excavated remains of a pit dug for a Thalys train station – into a concrete plateau topped, like a “fragment of a boreal forest,” with Swiss pines and alpine shrubs. He kept this ecological zone inaccessible to gardeners, landscapers, and visitors alike. Today, this elevated sanctuary, which emerges like a peg from a neatly manicured lawn, is a dense urban forest that challenges perplexed onlookers with an existential question: Is it a garden when there is no gardener?

At 79, Clément is still a prolific writer, lecturer, and designer, and he recently won the prestigious 2022 Landezine International Landscape Honor Award.

SOURCES

In practice: Gilles Clément on the planetary garden. Gilles Clément. The Architectural Review. 16 February 2021: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/in-practice/in-practice-gilles-clement-on-the-planetary-garden

Winner of the 2022 LILA Honour Award: Gilles Clément. Landezine International Landscape Award. 2022: https://landezine-award.com/gilles-clement/

Favoring the Living over Form. Conversation between Philippe Chiambaretta and Gilles Clément. PCA-Stream. 4 November 2017: https://www.pca-stream.com/en/articles/gilles-clement-favoring-the-living-over-form-115

Le jardin planétaire de Gilles Clément. France Inter Radio. Interview. 5 July 2017: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/le-temps-d-un-bivouac/le-jardin-planetaire-de-gilles-clement-2049236

On the High Line: The Third Landscape with Gilles Clement and Michael Gordon. View from Federal Twist. 29 November 2013: https://federaltwist.com/blog/2013/11/30/on-the-high-line-the-third-landscape-with-gilles-clement-and-michael-gordon

Entropy by design: Gilles Clément, Parc Henri Matisse and the Limits to Avant-garde Urbanism. Matthew Gandy. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 2012: https://www.hermandevries.org/articles/archives/article_2012_gandy.pdf

Jardin, Paysage, et Génie Naturel [Gardens, Landscape, and Natural Genius]. Gilles Clément. 2011-2012 Lecture at Collège de France: https://www.college-de-france.fr/sites/default/files/documents/gilles-clement/UPL7508320755259788511_R1112_Clement.pdf