Every year, more than 400,000 visitors flock to Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, which has hosted the International Garden Festival since 1992. It will therefore be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2016!
This event paints a panoramic picture of landscape design from around the world every year. Over 25 seasons, more than 700 gardens have been designed in the Festival grounds – all prototypes of the gardens of tomorrow, for the Festival, as a trendsetter, treasure trove of ideas and breeding ground for talent, breathes fresh life into these "living works of art" that gardens represent, by constantly showcasing new plants, new materials, original approaches and innovative concepts.
Spanning a wide array of fields and central to the major challenges we face for our future, the garden today is an extraordinary place of deliberation, innovation and experimentation.
Ecological research, scientific and technical investigations of all types observe, fertilise and reinvent this ever changing world.
Permaculture, transgenesis, biocontrol, aquaponics, hydroponics, green chemistry, phytoremediation, vertical farms, synergistic vegetable plots ... this is just some of the action packing this amazing adventure of the living world, where experimentation, prospecting and discovery combine tradition, ecology and technological progress – without losing sight of the humanistic dimension or of poetic imagination for all that.
Whether they go hand in hand with the adventure of "incredible edibles", "intelligent seeds", spectacular multi- grafted fruit trees, or with the chlorophyllous fluorescence of plants, modern-day gardens have a thousand- and-one reasons to enchant and astonish us.
The gardens of this 25th edition of the Festival should therefore surprise us as they set out to tell this extraordinary plant odyssey of the 21st century with all the creative imagination and fantasy that have always reigned at Chaumont-sur-Loire.
The 25th International Garden Festival will thus be showcasing gardens that address the great questions of our time, such as climate change, rising sea levels, "floating gardens" and the link between habitat and gardens. Once again the gardens at Chaumont-sur-Loire will captivate you with the inventions and proposals of a new generation of landscapers.
