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As far back as the 6th century,
the precept of Saint Benoît, "Ora et
labora" (prayer and work), linked the
religious order with the cultivation of the
soil. Throughout the centuries, the monks
acquired a very considerable knowledge of
plants, the care these required and the
medicinal proprieties. Between the 18th and
19th centuries, the botanical monks
journeyed throughout the world and brought
back numerous plants from China and North
America which beautify our gardens today.
Choosing the Abbey of Valloires, in France,
to gather together a collection of unique
shrubs thus allowed tribute to be paid to
those men who had a passion for plants. The
Gardens of Valloires are a little like a
foretaste of paradise.
The
Gardens of Valloires were born from the
meeting between a plant collector, an
important administrator of natural spaces in
the Somme department and a landscape
architect.
At the beginning of the '80's, Jean-Louis
Cousin, a nursery owner in the department of
the Pas-de-Calais, had assembled an imposing
collection of shrubs and wanted to present
them in a botanical park. As an
administrator of natural spaces in the Baie
de Somme and in charge of tourist
development, the Association for the
Development of the Picardy Coast chose
Valloires as the location for establishing a
future garden. The creation of this garden
was very complex; the whole of the
collection had to be used, a garden created
in harmony with the Abbey and, more
especially, the botanical subjects presented
in a modern and attractive manner. In 1987
Gilles Clément, a landscape architect, was
given the responsibility for the project.
"In a contradictory and happy way,
the installation of the Gardens of Valloires
curbed the apparently inevitable mechanism
by which a historic site slowly mummified in
the administrative limits of protected
boundaries
" Gilles Clément, 6th April
1998."
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