Cultivating the wild: in Rouen, the plant palette will be more local
By Joe Hue
Published on
Local and seasonal. It’s not about your fruits and vegetables, but about the plants that will adorn the beds of Rouen (Seine Maritime) in the future. Daisies, germander, St. John’s wort, periwinkle… Will these little native flowers that we no longer pay enough attention to replace more flashy ornamental plants that often come from elsewhere?
“We must combine landscape interest and naturalness. But that implies a change of perspective. It’s a cultural shift, and social acceptance is accelerating. Leaving plants to seed, for example, isn’t pretty, but it’s beneficial for biodiversity, for the birds that feed on them. We are quasi-precursors in Normandy to develop these plantations”, are proud Jean Michel Beregovoythe deputy in charge in particular of the resilient city and biodiversity and Francoise Lesconnec, the municipal councilor responsible for the environment and biodiversity. The Greens are proud to have “negotiated a higher budget” for this horticultural relocation.
“It’s true that a mixture of poppies, daisies and red clover is less spectacular than a horticultural mixture”, admits Jean Francois Jacquet. “Horticulturists who have been told to cultivator of the wildwhat was considered like a weed, so it rocks! “, explains the head of department responsible for the activity in this “beautiful tool” and “lung of the city” that is the cultural center of the City of Rouen.
100,000 plants
It is indeed on this site of Franqueville-Saint-Pierre (Seine Maritime)heir to a time when the City ran its own school of horticulture, where since the 1970s the 100,000 bedding plants and other shrubs (the other part growing in the Jardin des Plantes) before they adorn the planters and flower beds in the streets and parks of the city. Five green-fingered municipal agents choose 9 hectares of greenhouses and nurseries there.
And as part of the implementation of its “Rouen Naturellement” renaturation plan with a substantial budget of 7 million euros, the City is relocating its plant palettes there. as a Norman plant product. With the objective of promoting biodiversity, urban resilience and resistance to climate change, while maintaining an aesthetic and landscape character.
Local versus exotic plants
For the moment reduced to the bare minimum, this production is expected to expand to populate the massifs and constitute the base of some plantations in the future. Or a complement during the process will be to integrate them to more horticultural bedsespecially in the context of flowering.
It makes sense, local native species that grow spontaneously are naturally adapted to the soil and climate of the region, they contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and to the balance of ecosystems. From an ornamental and aesthetic point of view, the local species harmonize with the landscape and the topology, without swearing like an olive tree in Normandy.
Christopher Julien, the head of culture, explains that the city’s culture center is moving away from its historical “unique traditional all-chemical horticultural vocation”. Since the 90s, integrated biological protection is used here, where ladybugs have replaced insecticides. “We have to find a balance between treatments. We still sometimes intervene with fungicide against rust for example, but less and less. It didn’t start with the renaturation of the city, but it accentuated the movement. »
The one who has fitted out an entire embankment on site with mother feet of knapweed, speedwells and others bellflowers to harvest the seeds must “adapt the plant range to global warming, favor plants that consume less water. So we take samples of local flora according to a protocol established by the Bailleul National Botanical Conservatory, in renatured cemeteries for example, to cultivate them here. We still have to get out of quality plants, wild flowers, but with an aesthetic aspect”.
Which implies a change of perspectivebut also practices “It’s not at all the same cultivation methods as horticultural plants. The local flora is grown in pots, hardened “more and more outdoors and less and less in greenhouses”, with some difficulties for adapters. We try, for example, mixtures with more or less sand or clay. »
With a modest production, for the moment, only the herbaceous layer is concerned. But the goal is to also develop the shrub layer with some Charcoals, viburnum, the loudest and others country maples. If the watchword is more and more let nature take its coursenot everything exists locally: the soil in which the local plants grow comes from… the Baltic countries.
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