Once again this year, young and grown-ups enjoyed the Garden Rendez-vous to discover or rediscover the ENS de Lyon garden. There were more than 600 school children on Friday and 400 visitors on Saturday.
"See you next year!" That was the phrase most often uttered by teachers and school children on Friday at the end of their visit, and by the general public on Saturday. That weekend, children and visitors had no desire to leave our delightful garden.
Catch-up session for those who missed out
But let's start from the beginning. As every year, the faithful Rendez-vous aux jardins organisers were on hand on Friday.
As in previous years, weather, astronomy, pollination and the "two workshops to discover wildlife" were a great success. The programme included listening to birds and frogs singing, stroking a soft flower so that pollinators would want to "give it a pat", discovering the weather station and the sky, and so on.
There were also some newcomers this year. The Physics Laboratory joined forces with the Plant Reproduction and Development Laboratory (RDP) to invent a new workshop: the panpipes. It was a novelty that fitted in with the year's theme: music in the garden.
The ANR AggroCCol project also proposed a new workshop entitled "seeds and words". Thanks to the efforts of the project's scientific coordinator and the doctoral students present, the school children were able to discover ancient food seeds and the history of their names. Everyone enjoyed the experience, including the birds who came to feast on some of the seeds at the end of the workshop.
On Saturday, the garden opened its doors to the general public with the first tour, "Discovering some of the garden's plants". Visitors were invited to discover the medicinal, aromatic and dyeing uses of some of the garden's plants.
A little later, the first guided tour of the garden gave visitors an insight into how it is organised and managed. So it was in motion that the discovery of this garden - also in motion - imagined by Gilles Clément, took place.
To round off the afternoon, the day ended with a musical performance by the Fanfarovis, the brass band formed by students of ENS de Lyon.
A few days later...
After preparing the garden for visitors, the garden team prepared the sheep's larder!
