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Le domaine de Valençay, à la recherche de son paysage by Noémie MALET – Château de Bénouville
The Domaine de Valençay, an estate in quest of its landscape
What is a historic garden? A manmade creation. A place where each designer and architect integrates a dream within that of the site’s former master. A temporal and territorial continuity, whilst remaining an invitation to create, to reinvent, to complete, to adapt. An area in constant movement. The very first historic and landscaping study of the Domaine de Valençay park (44 hectares) was conducted in 2015. The estate has entered a turning point in its history, confronted with preservation and conservation issues and, concurrently, with the question of renewing tree collections and of the site’s economic, cultural and tourism-related needs. How can site preservation concur with a new lease of life for the estate in our modern era? A plan to create a garden, the first step in a vaster forthcoming project, emerged in 2016, seeming to offer a gateway between the site’s history and contemporary creation.*
Noémie Malet
Noémie Malet was born in Lozère in 1988. Her passion for history and the environment led her to choose a career in landscaping after passing her Baccalauréat. A BTS (Technical Diploma) in Landscaping Design at the Louis Pasteur agricultural college in Lempdes (Puy-de-Dôme), followed by a qualification as a landscape architect at the ENSAP in Bordeaux, offered her her grand entry into the “world of gardens”, thanks to comprehensive training in all aspects of landscape. And her love of gardens has since led her to contribute towards the restoration of the Treves Park in Padua (Italy), a study to save the Château de Lignières estate (Cher), the creation of a garden maze focusing on the history of Sauvignon in Quincy (Cher), to name but a few. Noémie Malet, who has worked for the past 3 years in a landscaping consultancy in Bourges (Atelier Passages), decided to complete her training in 2015, with a Master’s Degree in “historic gardens” at the National School of Architecture of Versailles. Hence, her arrival at the Domaine de Valençay!