Carrière Frères Garden
Embodying our values, our passion for plants and our love for the Normandy region, the Carrière Frères garden grows a green circle.
A GARDEN IN NORMANDIE
Located in Mortagne-au-Perche since 1901 via its manufacturing workshop, Carrière Frères wanted to commit even further to the region. This has now been achieved in the greenest of ways: CF has invested in the creation of a botanical garden for the town, along with the help of the Normandy Heritage Foundation and the Mortagne-au-Perche city government. It is quite unique among gardens, as it houses a seed garden* and has lofty ambitions.
*A seed garden is a garden intended for the production of seeds. The plants are left in the ground for the duration of their complete cycle: no cutting or picking is done, we let plants withered until seeds are obtained.
A SPACE FOR ALL KINDS OF PLANTING
Located behind the historic building whose foundations date from the Middle Ages, the current garden already cultivates seeds. Vegetables, flowers and herbs grow there protected by a stone wall. They are not picked or cut, but are watched over by the Mortagne in Transition Association, which looks after the seeds from sowing to distribution. When their time comes, they are harvested, packaged and placed in a seed library. Mortagne residents can then freely use them for their own vegetable gardens, or even contribute with their own harvests, conferring on this small garden great virtues of dialogue, sharing and maintaining biodiversity.
A SPECIES-RICH PROJECT
Representing a holistic plant approach, the botanical garden initiated by Carrière Frères and designed by Antoine Ménard, a landscape gardener from Mortagne, will enable the seed garden to be enlarged, providing the association with a more suitable and harmonious working area of around 100 m². In order to provide a welcoming and diverse environment, the other part of the grounds – approximately 300 m² – will be beautified and redesigned in a country style. Various endemic, rare or robust plant varieties will be seeded and planted, a sustainable way of enhancing and preserving the local floral heritage and biodiversity.
CULTIVATING CURIOSITY AND COMMUNITY
With its benches, tables and chairs as well as a wooden terrace and a kiosk, the future garden is intended to be a place for Mortagnais and tourists to stroll around, as well as a space for discovery, since it will have information boards on the various species, seeds and missions of Mortagne in Transition. It will be an opportunity for all generations to learn about biodiversity and natural cycles. And because the presence of hardworking pollinators is essential to the sustainability of the site, an educational beehive – transparent on one side and with a high entrance for greater safety – will be installed by the Orne Black Bee Conservatory, enabling visitors to observe the work of the workers in complete safety.
The Mortagne-au-Perche Garden embodies our values and love of nature : it is much more than a simple investment for us. By sowing commitment and enjoyment, ecology and education, aesthetics and ethics – all inseparable elements in our view – the garden will create a virtuous circle that will benefit everyone.