Meet French botanist V\u00e9ronique Mure who is championing naturalistic gardening, on the importance of preserving ecosystems and ensuring plants have a living soil. Words Louisa Jones <\/p>
Gardeners today sometimes think saving the planet means sacrificing pleasure for duty. Even with our swing towards naturalistic<\/a> gardening, it seems that ecologists and gardeners are often opposed in their approach, with each side picking art or ethics. French botanist-gardener V\u00e9ronique Mure insists you can have both, and enjoy every minute of it.<\/p> V\u00e9ronique grew up in the Mediterranean<\/a> region of southern France, spending weekends in the garrigue landscape, which supports many of the tough, drought-resistant <\/a>plants that are becoming increasingly familiar to UK gardeners adapting to climate change<\/a>. She went on to study ecology and botany at the University of Montpellier, where she was taught by Francis Hall\u00e9, the botanist and biologist known for his innovative research on the architecture of trees<\/a>.<\/p> The gardener must be both a naturalist, and an artist who chooses acceptable forms<\/p><\/blockquote> After graduating, she worked briefly as a garden consultant, before being elected to deputy mayor of N\u00eemes for seven years, during which time she was responsible for public gardens, forest and environment.<\/p> Today, she divides her time between teaching botany at Marseille\u2019s prestigious \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure du Paysage de Versailles-Marseille, with running her N\u00eemes-based consultancy, Botanique-Jardins-Paysages, where she is pioneering a new professional role for botanists in the design of large-scale public projects. When ancient plane trees along the 240km of the Canal du Midi needed replacing, V\u00e9ronique was asked to advise on appropriate species. She\u2019s also worked with dry-gardening guru Olivier Filippi <\/a>and with landscape architects APS to plant the dramatic hilltop Jardin des Migrations around Marseille\u2019s Mediterranean museum, Mucem.<\/p> It\u2019s not plagiarising nature to draw inspiration from it <\/p><\/blockquote> Alongside her many public projects, there have been personal ones too. For 11 years, from 2003, V\u00e9ronique and her late husband took on 12 acres of former agricultural land, known as La Bigotie, in Whether what she created is technically a garden may be a moot point but V\u00e9ronique argues that while tasks such as reconstituting plant groups, gradually normalising the nitrogen content of too-rich soils, removing the most invasive plants for the benefit of the most timid, and selecting and spreading favoured seeds, may not be part of ordinary horticulture, they are undeniably gardening. \u201cIt\u2019s not plagiarising nature to draw inspiration from it and take advantage of its processes rather than fight against them,\u201d she says.<\/p> Early on she abandoned what she describes as the \u201cextravagant idea\u201d of keeping things clean, and made the colourful wildflowers<\/a> growing in nearby meadows<\/a> and verges central to the planting. \u201cWe wanted to make the most of their appeal,\u201d she says. \u201cWe tested sweet peas<\/a>, yarrow and fennel seed harvested along the road, producing mixes easily adapted to the soil and climate of our site.\u201d<\/p> The result was meadows that produced an explosion of flowers, including ox-eye daisies, field scabious, viper\u2019s bugloss, greater knapweed, common yarrow, wild carrot, native vetch and patches The main objective of any gardening practice should be to help the roots achieve autonomy<\/p><\/blockquote> Unlike other naturalistic designers, who often recommend starting from a weed<\/a>-free site even if that needs to be chemically obtained, V\u00e9ronique\u2019s approach is to explore what is already there, and how it works \u2013 or doesn\u2019t \u2013 to establish a solid, realistic base for resistant, long-lasting design. Ongoing change is part of the plan, so she works with evolving communities, not fixed lists of individual species. \u201cAll their lives, plants progress in the soil as well as in the air,\u201d she says, \u201cendlessly reinventing their relationship with others.\u201d In her view, \u201cthe gardener must be both a naturalist who knows the plants, their needs and their dynamics, and an artist who chooses acceptable forms.\u201d<\/p> Last year, V\u00e9ronique gave a captivating talk at the Dynamic Vision symposium in Mannheim, Germany, where she drew attention to the underestimated wonders of plants\u2019 root systems. \u201cThe main objective of any gardening practice should be to help the roots achieve a certain degree of autonomy, particularly with regard to water<\/a>, but also to provide them with a living soil and thus encourage symbiotic associations that enable them to live together as a community,\u201d she says. \u201cOf course, gardeners are reassured to see that the plants they look after are growing well, flowering and bearing fruit. But unconsciously, by spending time improving the soil, decompacting or watering it, they are gardening the roots.\u201d<\/p> For V\u00e9ronique, such ecological balance is not added on, but built in from the start. The pleasures are those of co-operation and community, not control; not so much the wow factor perhaps, but gentle, everyday and ever-changing wonderment. <\/p>