Site Specific: Jardin des Joyeux

Wagon Landscaping - Aubervilliers, France, 2016

WL Maladrerie is a garden city built in the 1980’s in Aubervilliers, Paris. At the entrance to the district, a former parking lot was abandoned, its asphalt surface broken up in 2015 by mechanical digger to prevent continued vehicle access. While waiting for a future urban renovation project to be realised, Wagon Landscaping transformed this vacant lot into a giant rock garden, creating a temporary urban garden on top of the car park’s 1600 sq m concrete slab.

With the aim of creating a bio-diverse green space more than 150 plant species were introduced, chosen for their behaviour in extreme conditions (drought, poor soils and shallow grounds, variations of temperature) and their self-sufficiency (adapted to irregular care and maintenance). The project was a test bed for learning how such a garden would work within the parameters of no watering and no export of material from the site.

The garden is organised in to four parallel areas; the “succulent garden” based on gravels and where sedums proliferate, the “central meadow” with perennials and shrubs, the “path” which uses a pre-existing pavement creates a route through the garden and the “planted edge”, where bushes and pioneer trees create a threshold between the garden and the surrounding dwellings.

Wagon Landscaping carried out the entire operation, including the site works, reducing the project’s costs and timeline. At the time of writing, August 2020, the garden is still in place and continues to thrive.

NOTES

Published 31st August 2020

Photographs © Wagon Landscaping

Thanks to Wagon Landscaping for their assistance in compiling this post.