Il giardino in movimento

Il giardino in movimento (Garden in Motion)
Gilles Clément. Quodlibet, 2011 (319 pp., € 28)

If you search for the department of Creuse on Google Maps, the indicator shows a place that is not far from the road between Guéret and Aubusson, along frazzled and vaguely out-of -focus edges that separate the forest from a small clearing. It is one of those marginal places, on the edge between light and shadow, that today Gilles Clément would call the "third landscape." It all started here, or rather a few miles from here, on the property purchased by Clément in the late 1970s where he conducts the experiments described in Giardino in movimento.

Clément's first book is such a cult object that—although this version by Quodlibet is the first official translation into Italian—before its publication, a number of underground translations circulated, passing hands as though between members of a cult, like some 18th century treatises. In fact, the 18th century treatise, in the attempt to condense experience down to its essential traits, is the very basis for Il giardino in movimento. Like Abbot Laugier's hut, the Creuse garden is the matrix for all possible experiences, the place from which to begin to rethink practical knowledge.

What are these experiences? Clement announces them by deploying the word friche (neglected land) which plays a central role in the book. The property in the Creuse region was purchased in a state of semi-abandonment; part of the challenge consisted precisely in making a garden while respecting this condition insofar as possible. The theoretical issue is the relationship between garden form and energy: if the land, when left to itself, tends to move in certain directions, should the task of the gardener perhaps be to reinforce and guide the forces already present on site, consequently readjusting his/her own formal expectations?

From here it is a short step to the anecdotes regarding the reconsideration of weeds, brambles and moles. What is important in Giardino in movimento is another thing, however: the idea of the garden tied to the concept of inhabiting, the true capacity for understanding and respecting the behavior and logic of the living world. Clément, the gardener, is a curious specimen of the woodsman-scientist who is also somewhat akin to the jazz improviser; he is someone who, while cutting the grass in his undershirt, recognizes every plant and makes instant decisions based on deep knowledge. Planted in the middle of the complexity of nature, he observes and listens, participating in the flows of information that structure the environment, assuming responsibility (living also means this) for his choices.

Clément stated for the first time in this book that everything started with the Creuse garden, and he later repeated it so often that many of us have come to believe it. Since its first edition in 1991 by the tiny publishing house, Pandora, the book has grown progressively, incorporating new experiences (the famous Parc Citroën), becoming a kind of monograph over time. In other respects, it is also a handbook: no other book by Clément explains in such detail "how to." If you want to buy property in the Creuse department and try it, you can probably do so. This book is very different from the 2004 Manifesto del Terzo paesaggio (Manifesto of the Third Landscape) which initiated a new phase in Clément's thinking that pleased everyone, except perhaps landscape designers.

Today many people seem convinced that Clément is of interest because he theorizes the informal garden, spontaneous design, and other friendly notions inspired by the 1960s. It should be said that Il giardino in movimento does not always help to disprove such interpretations. It faces many aesthetic issues and does not shirk from some nods in this direction when necessary (the image evoked by the title, that of a garden that "moves," might recall Archigram).

However, the core of Clément's work is the staging of a meeting/clash between "two cultures" in seeking a scientific basis for his literary reflection and vice versa, in proposing a grounded intellectual style—in the sense of being founded on the land. Quodlibet does well to move in this direction, adding one thing, and only one, to the Italian edition, with respect to various French editions: a repertory of the cited plants, beautifully designed by Enrico Scarici, pages and pages of an index with all the proper Latin names in their places. Now I'm going to read it, then we can talk about it again.
Filippo De Pieri