150 gardens open in Pays de la Loire on Friday 2, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 June 2023 on the theme of garden music.
240 events are organized. More than 2,200 parks and gardens will open their doors, sometimes exceptionally, all over France.
For 20 years, this event has allowed the public to visit parks and gardens, whether private or public, to promote their wealth and biodiversity. The private owners of the parks and open gardens are mostly volunteers and enthusiasts. Beyond that, the event is an opportunity for the Ministry of Culture to share with the public its policy of protection, conservation and enhancement, enriched by the establishment of the label «Remarkable garden» in 2004.
Music in the garden
This theme evokes the many sounds heard in the gardens: songs of birds, sounds of other animals (frogs, insects, etc.), sounds of water, wind, plants, sound installations, music composed for a garden, etc.
An event to showcase the richness of our parks and gardens
Rendez-vous aux jardins is an event that aims to highlight the richness and variety of parks and gardens, historical and contemporary and the preservation of a cultivated nature throughout the territory.
It is also an opportunity to sensitize visitors to the many actions implemented by the Ministry of Culture, local authorities and owners, private and public, to conserve, restore, create gardens and transmit knowledge and know-how.
Some examples in Pays de la Loire:
Nantes Plant Garden
Sound travel in the tropics
We approach it, we take a curious look through its tiles, we dream of entering it at night in the shelter of the eyes to believe ourselves for a moment on the other side of the world. The Palmarium de Nantes impresses as much as it shapes the imagination. A true heritage of the city of the Dukes inaugurated in 1896, it is today a tropical environment dedicated to the cultivation of epiphytic plants (orchids, ferns, bromeliads, peanuts having the particularity to grow while clinging to other plants).
Closed to the public because of works, the greenhouse reopens its doors in the spring, enriched with a sound and musical atmosphere created by Thomas Cochini (composer of the Nantes duo Labotanique) from recordings of his in situ sound of the French audio-naturalist Marc Namblard.
The song of the Palmarium is an immersive sound work, enhancing the species of Guyana. It gives to hear a partition of the living composed sometimes of hammers of red-necked peaks, stridulations of orthopteras, coactions of amphibians or of howls of monkeys alouates or humming of honeybees. An invitation to dive under the canopy!
Saturday 15h-18h and 21h-23h/ Sunday 15h-18h
Maulévrier - Oriental Park
The Oriental Park of Maulévrier is a Japanese-inspired garden of transformation where nature is admired as a symbol of time, punctuating the seasons. The vegetation in the Oriental Park, rich in more than 400 species, marks the seasons with its variations of colors throughout the year: the white and pink blooms of cherry trees (Hanami) then azaleas in spring, the green shades in summer, Maple leaf blight in autumn (Koyo). As a metaphor for the cycle of life, spring symbolizes youth, summer symbolizes adulthood, autumn symbolizes the wisdom of old age, and winter symbolizes rest before the new season. The circulation of water in the garden, from east to west, represents the race of the sun from sunrise to sunset.
Discovery tour: Sunday 3pm-5pm
Laval - Family gardens (Saint-Nicolas site)
A moment of conviviality and discovery in family gardens .
Thematic exchanges on water in gardens (recovery of rainwater, mulching, climate change, rational use of water...), biodiversity in gardens, and visit of a plot arranged in garden-forest with perpetual vegetables, fruit trees and a hundred-year-old oak.
Open House on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 June only.
The day of Friday, June 2 is dedicated to the reception of schools who wish to participate.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday 9am-6pm
Bonnétable - vegetable garden
Our gardener has concocted many surprises on the theme of music!
You will be able to test your musical talents thanks to funny instruments made in recovery equipment.
Friday 15h-17h, Saturday and Sunday 15h-18h
Venansault - Loriot gardens
The Loriot Gardens, an Anglo-Chinese park, is inspired by the innovative spirit of 18th-century landscaped gardens that appeal to the imagination and sensibility of the visitor.
Inspired by the Moulin Joly Garden that the academician C.-H. Watelet had created on the banks of the Seine in Colombes near Paris, the creators of the Jardins du Loriot have restored a "Chinese" bridge expression of the enthusiasm in the West, since the eighteenth century, for the Chinese Gardens.
Guided tours: Les Nouveautés 2023 et 4 illustrations sonores aux Jardins du Loriot: Saturday 14:30-19:00
Concerts/ La Musique aux Jardins du Loriot: Sunday 14:30-19:00