While the bellflowers and irises have bloomed, and the benefits of gardening on health are well established, participating in physical activity and reducing stress, let’s celebrate spring for our Thursday meeting “La Bulle”, from the news podcast “ Wait a minute ! “. Gilles Clément, agricultural engineer, landscape gardener, botanist, entomologist, creator of the concept of “ moving garden is the guest of this episode.
The philosopher gardener
This author of numerous books, including Praise of Wanderers – Herbs, Trees and Flowers Conquering the World, to Robert Laffont editions, evokes for us “wandering” plants. Called weeds or wild flowers, they are too often banned from crops.
Gilles Clément defends these plants from elsewhere that are found in gardens and wastelands, such as Tibetan rhubarb, California poppy, Siberian mugwort or giant hogweed, but also fennel or coconut…
What are “wanderers”? “It’s a somewhat poetic term that I give to plant species that have a tendency to move easily on the ground, underlines Gilles Clément in this interview. These are the ones that surprise us with their speed in arriving in a field where they were not before”.
Participate in an “emerging ecosystem”
“Weeds do not exist. Herbs are sometimes misplaced in a garden, it is not convenient. Weeding is removing what has not been planted. Me, I never do that. I welcome and then I see what to choose. These plants [vagabondes] are of great interest because they play a major role in the ecosystem. But they tend to disappear, because they are more present in disturbed, agricultural soils, but where the soils are dead. They are intended for the cultivation of a single species. Soils are treated to eliminate all other species. »
While these plants are scary, because they can be invasive, the landscape gardener puts things into perspective. “There is a moment when the extension stops. We don’t really know how it works. This gives rise to what scientists call an “emerging ecosystem”, meaning a collection of species that have been around for a while, and those that have just arrived. It is not dangerous. It is sometimes an increase in diversity. If it’s frowned upon, it’s because we have a cultural blockage. (…) It has nothing to do with biology. »
Do you want to know Gilles Clément’s favorite “wandering” plant? See you at the end of this exchange, to listen to in the audio player above.
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