Toulouse. This park is a spectacular concentrate of the extreme drought that hit the Pink City
By Gabriel Kenedi
Published on
It is the largest park in the city but not necessarily the best known. A ToulouseMaourine Park – like all green spaces – suffered a lot from the unprecedented heat waves and drought that hit the Pink City this summer.
A park that has suffered a lot
As autumn began a fortnight ago, this 14-hectare park, located in the Borderouge district, is unrecognizable: The pond that borders the park’s large playground has shrunk in volume due to the drought, appear a pebble beach useless.
As for the stream that crosses and irrigates the park, it has simply disappeared due to the lack of precipitation and the intense drought.
Trees are in danger of dying
The trees and other foliage also suffered a lot, so much so that by July, the leaves were falling to the ground, giving the impression of being in autumn… before its time.
What is certain is that the summer drought of 2022 generated “a lot of worry” for the future of certain trees and plants, which are sometimes young in this park which was laid out around the pond, when the ZAC de Borderouge was created, nearly 20 years ago.
“It’s still a bit early to be able to make a full assessment. We will know more in the coming weeks how our plants were able to survive. There will undoubtedly be some loss but we hope it will be as small as possible. In the event of loss, we will replant, even change the gasoline if we realize that it was not the most suitable, “says Clement Riquetmunicipal councilor responsible for gardens and green spaces and biodiversity.
He adds: “We will try to draw all the conclusions. Tree planting, soil dewatering are very important subjects and the mayor wants us to move even faster. The summer was also an opportunity to put in place things that did not exist, or not enough in the past: I am thinking of the emptying of the Nakache swimming pool, which allowed us, including with a decree of prohibition of watering, to come and recover this water there. We have a little leeway that we will have to explore”.
Here are the images of the Maourine park:
“The situation has been extreme from all points of view”
Another particularity of the Maourine Park: it is home to The Gardens of the Museum, a 4-hectare space which includes both “the vegetable gardens of the world” (nearly 700 varieties of plants are pampered there) and the “forgotten path”: 3 hectares returned to the wild state to be able to protect natural biodiversity and study its development. A path that is only open to the public through visits organized in small groups, with a mediator.
Inevitably, the gardeners of the Jardin du Muséum had to adapt to the particularly dry climate. ” The situation was extreme in every way, whether for plants, as for men. We were impacted by the prefectural decree which announced to us at some point that we no longer had the right to water. We finally got a derogation allowing us to implement extremely targeted watering,” explains Isabelle Nottaristhe deputy director of the Natural History Museum of Toulouse.
She adds: “In the vegetable garden part of the world, on a selection of the most vulnerable plants for watering before 8 a.m., in a reduced way. We set up shading areas as soon as possible to protect certain plants. On the other hand, on the forgotten path part, we assumed not to touch anything, since it is the very principle of this space”.
In the Gardens of the Museum, a pineapple has grown!
Sign that the summer was particularly scorching, for the first time, a pineapple – whose growth generally requires a tropical climate – a push in the Vegetable Gardens part of the world… a great first!
A sustainably modified landscape… in one summer
But it is in the part where the agents of the Museum do not intervene, the forgotten path, that the consequences are most striking. “This summer, we had the feeling of walk in a forest in the middle of autumn. All the leaves fell one after another. Even some resistant species, plants from the Mediterranean region that settled there naturally, showed signs of suffering and dried up,” notes Isabel Nottaris.
“The most impressive is the reedbed (which has two parts, one already colonized by reeds and the other which is an area of open water, editor’s note). It is a space with water that fills and empties naturally during the year. Normally, it begins to dry up in July and there is always a little water left. This is also where the people come to drink. birds. But this summer it was different: in June, it was already empty. In July and August, the ground was cracked and there was not a single drop of water. The reeds, which were around this space, spread little and were able to grow inside the basin. The consequence is that the water will not come back”.
A stretch of water that has become… a field of reeds!
In this so-called open water zone, with fish and fishing birds, the water has therefore given way to a field conducive to the development of reeds.
“Sometimes this area has already been dry during the summer, but never completely. This year, the situation was exceptional enough for a process that takes 20, 30, 40 years to happen – a gradual colonization of the reeds – to happen all of a sudden”, adds Patrice Luchetta, mediator at the Gardens of the Museum. “We think there was a complete assemblage, so we lost the fish there. The kingfishers, herons and even parishes cormorants and gulls that will be included in it may no longer become. We had a complete change in the landscape, ”he adds.
“It is still too early to estimate what the consequences have been. We will have to redo inventories to be able to see what the real impact of this period was, ”discovered Isabel Nottaris.
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