Great Garden Influences - Provost and Clement

The Parc Andre Citroen the first park to be built in Paris for over a hundred years and the whimsical, futuristic design was the result of a design competition won by two different groups. The judges of the competition could not decide between two plans so they asked the two finalists merge their ideas into one plan. The result is a park with distinctly different areas created by each of the designers.

Alain Provost is arguably France's most renowned landscape architect. At the time of the Parc Andre Citroen competition he had won several other public design competitions. Provost was responsible for the design plan that was implemented on the southern end of the site, which demonstrated the themes of artifice and architecture. The design is very formal and includes a water canal, central lawn and granite 'water lily' towers. In 1995, Alain Provost also won the contract to build the Thames Barrier Park, an innovative and playful design including dancing waters and an adventurous planting scheme.

The other half of the park was created by Gilles Clement whose design for the northern end of the site includes the White Garden, The Sense Gardens, the two large greenhouses and the Movement Garden. Clement was a virtual unknown to the French public at the time he was chosen as a winner and the Parc Andre Citroen competition was the first design competition he had entered. Despite all this, he proved himself to be worthy of the challenge.

Clement is now nearly sixty and the son of a wine merchant. He attended the National School of Horticulture in Versailles and earned a degree in agricultural engineering in 1967 and a diploma in landscape design from the same school. He began his career modestly, designing private gardens for the wealthy. Later he went on to create major projects including the Domaine du Rayol, the Ficelle in Lausame and he received France's National Landscape Prize in 1998.

Garden Andre Citroen photograph by bripirie, used under a creative commons attribution licence