A place dedicated to the art of gardening in Europe

An association under the French law of 1901, the Institut Européen des Jardins & Paysages (IEJP) was born in 2013 from a partnership between the Fondation des Parcs et Jardins de France (French Foundation of Parks and Gardens), the Calvados General Council and the MRSH (Caen University Research Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences). The association also benefitted from support for its creation from the French Ministry of Culture, via the Normandy Regional Cultural Affairs Directorate (DRAC).

Our vocation is to develop knowledge and to promote garden art in Europe, and to contribute towards increasing awareness of the role of garden creation in the construction of European and international culture. We intend to contribute to the necessary reflection on the garden in the landscape, on the landscape as a garden, as a nourishing and cultural element essential to human beings. The IEJP is therefore a place for European encounters, equally open to garden amateurs and specialists as to the general public.

To do so, we implement various actions and projects.

  • The valorisation and on-line publishing of digital inventories on European gardens. A vast source of information, these inventories are useful equally to garden amateurs and enthusiasts as they are to professionals from the world of parks and gardens, researchers and historians. Six inventories are currently available online via our website (France, Portugal, Belgium – Flanders, Belgium – Wallonia, England and Italy), representing over 19,000 listed gardens.
  • Organisation of monthly conferences, free of charge and open to all. Over 180 speakers have been welcomed: garden historians, owners, estate gardeners, philosophers, etc. with almost 8,000 attendees since 2013.
  • Organisation of colloquiums and day conferences.
  • Organisation of exhibitions:
    . 2014: ‘André Le Nôtre et ses jardins’ (André Le Nôtre and his gardens)
    . 2015: ‘Un homme, des paysages. Samuel Craquelin en Normandie’ (A man, landscapes. Samuel Craquelin in Normandy).
    . 2016: ‘La Normandie des jardins’ (The Normandy of gardens)

‘Since its creation, the IEJP has striven to develop garden and landscape culture on a European, and often international, scale. Over the past three centuries, architecture has become acknowledged as a noble activity – both from a utilitarian and aesthetic viewpoint, whilst garden and landscape development is equally important to the inhabitants of any region of the world as it is to the construction of individual cultures’

Pascal Buléon, Chairman of the Institut Européen des Jardins & Paysages

Scroll to Top