Chaumont
Client
Urban Development
Inspired by classical philosophy, the garden of the Hemispheres is a promenade of discovery.
The visitor leaves the familiar world to enter a space of reflection. He must make abstraction of his surroundings to discover his own ideas. He leaves behind what he knows in order to know his own thoughts.
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This garden offers the visitor many scenes.
A passage planted with bamboo, signifying departure for a « new » world.
Then an opening reveals an oculus, with its two symbolic parterres. It is a theatre of meditation, as if the two hemispheres of the brain had split open.
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Ghislaine Schoeller – Novelist
Two parterres, one cultivated, the other uncultivated. (1) The right hemisphere is described by rows of aromatic herbs: sages, thymes, rosemary, verbena. The left hemisphere is a tangle of wild ophiopogons grasses of different colours. From a platform at the end of the oval, the visitor contemplates the hemispheres. Facing him, a mirror reflects the sky. Or, perhaps, reflects the visitor’s mind beyond the temporal limits of the garden? Retiring to a bench, the visitor lapses into his reverie. Is the garden not a place to dream? The visit continues amid the scent of rosemary. A sundial, for which the visitor provides the marker, records time by his shadow. Time is suspended. The visitor exits the oculus by a trellis covered in bamboo chimes. Thus he returns to the familiar world, accompanied by the chiming bamboo. The garden has created a promenade through the hemispheres of culture and reflection.
[1] Letter from Voltaire to W. Chambers, 7 August 1772. Quoted in Jardins en France 1760-1820; Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites; Paris 1977.
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