Resilience and adaptation from one continent to another
We set up a multi-month trip to North America, mainly in the North of the United States, around climate change and adaptation of trees and gardeners.
Why North America? Why this long trip?
Before listing the arguments that would take us to the other side of the Atlantic, it is necessary to be honest: there is a fascination for this continent, these large wild spaces, American culture with all its paradoxes.
So at the beginning there is a personal desire to confront and meet this country. Of course, if that were the only reason, we would not bother to write these lines and plane tickets would already be purchased. This project is motivated by deep convictions and is consistent with the current troubled period.
It is part of a comprehensive approach. A simple desire at first, we have expanded our horizon to make it a useful and coherent project.
We have been working for 25 years in the design, management, maintenance of living gardens, tree size and care as well as wood enhancement. Since the beginning of our activity, with the creation of « Gardens of tomorrow »We have put our deep convictions at the service of the lives of soils and ecosystems. Often catalogued « green » in our beginnings, today people call us because they seek this vision and this benevolent look on the living. In this time of profound change, we are also facing great challenges in maintaining our long-term activity and helping to make our projects ever more resilient. For this we are looking for solutions and evolutions.
The United States, like most countries around the world, is facing climate change. Some states more than others, with a significant acceleration. The size of the country, the diversity of climates and socio-economic contexts offer opportunities for observation and for a wide variety of situations.
This project is also sourced from recent IPCC publications, including regional entities that have published a report detailing the more local changes.
Our daily work constantly confronts us with climate change and its effects on the environment. Disturbing the rate of precipitation, heat waves and storms are putting increasing pressure on plants and gardens, even endangering the survival of certain species in our latitudes.
The horticulture world faces a series of questions about the evolution of practices, which remain for the moment with partial answers.
For the past 20 years, we have had the opportunity to confront different situations and experience a panel of gardening techniques and landscape developments. Agroecology and permaculture have been valuable guides for us to adapt our projects to different conditions. Today we are able to offer living and resilient gardens, much less sensitive to climatic hazards.
But things are accelerating and we cannot fall asleep. What the IPCC is planning for the coming decades forces us to go further and impose a challenge.
It is in this state of mind, both of curiosity, of research and of sharing that we approach this journey and we wish to meet the actors of horticulture and landscape development in the United States.
Specifically, for various reasons, we have chosen two main regions.
One on the east coast with the state of Massachusetts. The New York area is very interesting for all its urban parks and the constraints that climate change imposes on cities to stay alive and avoid being swallowed by rising waters.
Then we will join the west coast, with Oregon and the state of Washington, for its proximity to the sequoia forests, the city of Corvallis and its formation of « dry farming » proposed by the University and the City of Portland for its pioneering role in the ecological management of stormwater.
We are looking to meet landscape designers, nurseries, public and private gardeners who have become aware of these changes and are experimenting with new practices.
Our goal is to build links and create a network of actors involved in this transition.
