Garden of the priory of Orsan

The gardens of the priory Notre-Dame d' Orsan are gardens of monastic inspiration medieval located in the middle of the Prieuré of Orsan, a priory fontevrist based at the 12th century by Robert d' Arbrissel, on the territory of the commune of Maisonnais, in the Département of Expensive the, in France.

History and motivation

Created by two architects, Sonia Lesot and Patrice Taravella, and maintained by the garden Master Gilles Guillot, these gardens are the evocation of the lost Paradis. The initial will was not to carry out an exact reconstitution of the gardens of the origin of the priory, but rather to evoke the spirit of a medieval garden.

With the the Middle Ages, the gardens of monastery were to nourish the body and the spirit and to bring quietude necessary to the meditation. Taking as a starting point the biblical gardens, they included/understood at least four types of garden: the Pot , l´ Herbarium for the medicinal plants, the Orchard - cemetery and the garden of the Cloister. The fence, separating wild nature from the civilized life, the fountain, representing the four rivers of the Paradise and the Courtyard (or prael), lawn strewn with flowers and decorated benches of greenery, arbors and pergolas, are other elements impossible to circumvent of the medieval gardens. The design of the gardens of Orsan thus met three needs: the function, symbolic system and the harmony.

The element founder of the gardens of Orsan was thus the development of a cloister of greenery with in its center a fountain. All adjacent gardens: the simple ones, the orchards, the alley of the small fruits, the labyrinth, the rosery (or garden of Marie), the raised kitchen garden, the floor, the pergola and the garden of the olive-trees were established inside the field and around the cloister. For that, it is necessary to add the pre one flowered, with the alleys traced and maintained to allow a walk towards wood and along the brook.

Label

These gardens carry the label “garden remarkable” decreed by the Ministère of the Culture.

Bibliography and sources

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