Downloade here: Laudation by Maren Köhler-Prehn
The International Garden Festival – Hortillonnages Amiens offers gardens, landscape creations and works of art accessible to the public on foot or by boat on the islands of the Hortillonnages in Amiens and along the river Somme. Each year, landscape designers, architects and visual artists are invited to respond to a call for proposals to create works in situ. Spread over this exceptional site, these creations offer a quirky or poetic view on this complex environment, its history, and its future, sometimes funny or critical, but always unexpected. It is also a gentle exploration that allows us to question the links between nature, culture, agriculture, and heritage in the face of the many effects of climate change.
The landscape of the Hortillonnages was formed when the river Somme widened into several indistinct ponds, creating a kind of jigsaw puzzle of land and water. In the Middle Ages, the inhabitants dug irrigation canals to create an area of productive market gardens (or hortillons). In the 19th century, there were as many as 950 hortillons. These gardens supplied the entire city with fruit and vegetables.
Created in 2010 by the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, this garden festival is organised since 2018 by art & jardins I Hauts-de-France to further strengthen the links between contemporary gardens and works of art, ecology, social inclusion, and sustainable regional development. It is also part of a larger garden project covering the whole of the Hauts-de-France region, the Grand Est region and internationally.