Jardin d'érode

> s’éroder : s’user lentement
Erode Garden is a landscape installation designed for one of the islands of the Hortillonnages of Amiens as part of the Garden Festival. Set within the bed of the Somme River, the hortillonnages are ancestral market-gardening lands, composed of cultivated islands whose survival depends on constant maintenance. Here, the balance is fragile: the banks must be continuously rebuilt to keep the islands “afloat” and to resist their slow dissolution into the marsh.

The parcel entrusted to Wagon is wooded and has long been abandoned. Its banks, already weakened, are only partially held in place by the roots of existing alders. Erosion is at work, gradual and inexorable. The project highlights this dynamic and proposes to present the banks themselves as a garden, bearing witness to an ongoing process.

Terraces are installed along the shores like orthopaedic splints, positioned in the in-between zone of water and land. They materialise the area of friction where everything is at stake: they support root systems, trap debris carried by the water and contribute to stabilising the banks. The garden becomes an active space, both protective and evolving.

Within this interstice, inhabited by the constant movement of water, lives Erode, a mythical figure, tireless in its work.