Jardin des Murmures (Garden of Whispers) is a temporary garden created by Simonson Landscape in collaboration with Botanic’Art Paysage for the Festival International des Jardins de Chaumont-sur-Loire 2024. Though ephemeral in form, it carries a lasting vision—a prototype for future architecture where gardens are not applied as decoration, but built into the structural language of buildings. At once sculptural, speculative, and ecological, the garden investigates how soil, vegetation, water, and structure might be reassembled into a living architecture of the future.

The inspiration comes from vegetated cliffs and rocky hillsides, where plants root themselves in complex layers of soil and stone. In this garden, that natural logic is translated into a built topography of concrete columns and walls. These forms, cast on site using low-carbon materials, evoke future ruins or fragments of emerging structures. They shape movement, catch light, offer shade, and—crucially—contain soil. From these porous containers, plants emerge: not as decoration, but as architectural mass.
At the heart of the concept is the soil-bearing column—a vertical structure that supports both plant life and spatial organization. These are imagined not just as garden elements, but as future building components. Unlike typical green walls, which are thin and dependent on artificial systems, these columns contain real soil depths, capable of sustaining shrubs, grasses, and small trees. They propose a new syntax for architecture: one in which thickness, weight, and vegetative layers are integrated into the very bones of buildings.

In a dense urban context, this system could harvest rainwater from rooftops and distribute it downward through planted supports. The garden’s layout, designed like an inverted roof, helps imagine this passive irrigation cycle in action. Water trickles through the soil, feeding multiple strata and encouraging deep rooting. It is a speculative, yet grounded model—a response to the growing need for buildings that support biodiversity, regulate heat, and embrace ecological complexity.

The title Jardin des Murmures refers to the subtle, persistent ways nature expresses itself in the city. These are not literal whispers, but signs of life pushing through cracks, resisting impermeable surfaces, reclaiming space. The garden makes this quiet resilience visible. It invites us to imagine an urban environment that supports and amplifies these murmurs—where architecture creates the conditions for biodiversity to emerge, rather than suppressing it. By offering soil, shadow, shelter, and time, the garden proposes a framework of passive support: if we build the right forms, nature will speak for itself.
The planting palette reflects this vision. Each species was chosen for its ability to thrive in poor or constrained soils, much like those found in dense urban environments. At the top of the soil-bearing columns, pioneer and structural species such as Populus alba ‘Nivea’, Melia azedarach, Elaeagnus angustifolia ‘Quicksilver’, Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’, and Vitex agnus-castus ‘Latifolia’ suggest a future canopy. Mid-level fissures host adaptive, drought-tolerant plants like Convolvulus mauritanicus, Euphorbia pithyusa, Iberis ‘Masterpiece’, and Sedum sexangulare. At the base, where soil and moisture accumulate, species such as Oenothera speciosa ‘Siskiyou’, Stachys byzantina ‘Big Ears’, Thymus nitens, Erigeron karvinskianus, and Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii create a textured, flowering layer that supports pollinators and spontaneous colonization. These plants are not decorative accents but ecological agents—asserting themselves, slowly transforming the built environment over time.

Visitors enter through a narrow passage that heightens sound and sensation, stepping into a clearing shaped by vertical masses and vegetated mounds. The circulation unfolds intuitively—through shadow and light, enclosure and release. Surfaces underfoot are raw and mineral: compacted sand, crushed stone, and a mulch of recycled demolition gravel (paillage en concassé de démolition)—a low-impact material that both nourishes the soil and reinforces the garden’s textured, architectural feel. Everything encourages a slower pace. The result is a space that feels at once ancient and futuristic, cultivated and wild.

Built with the support of local partners—including Verte Ligne, Pépinière Daniel Soupe, and L’Amie des Jardins magazine—the garden was constructed on site using simple, reversible techniques and a minimal carbon footprint. Every element, from the soil mix to the concrete formwork, was selected for both its expressive and environmental performance.

We believe Jardin des Murmures merits recognition in the Landscape and Architecture category not only for its atmospheric and conceptual clarity, but for the questions it raises about how buildings and gardens might evolve together. Can we design structures that carry life within them? Can we shift from greening surfaces to cultivating systems? This garden offers one possible answer—quietly, but with conviction. It is a landscape to inhabit, reflect in, and learn from.

Location of the project:
Chaumont-sur-Loire, France

Other credits: International Garden Festival of Chaumont-sur-Loire, Sponsors: Verte ligne pépinière, Pépinière Daniel Soupe, L’amie des jardins magazine

Project typology:
Experimental Ephemeral Garden