The Garden of Words > Nicolas Triboi, 2024

The Garden of Words > Nicolas Triboi, 2024

The “Garden of Words” is located at the confluence of the school, the middle school, and the CCAS (Communal Center for Social Action), a prime location for this space in the center of the village. The project aims to achieve several human, educational, and ecological objectives:

• Convey life stories, words
• Write in the earth, on the earth, shape
• Create a playful and contemplative space
• Improve biodiversity
• Give meaning to the plantings (fruit trees and community gardens)

A LIVING SPACE, FROM STORYTELLING TO WRITING
The 12 steles create a “sacred” space, a place of utmost importance, where words soar towards the sky. They tell the story of the people from this mining region, not the collective history, but that of individuals, their living memories, their inner landscapes.
The Garden of Words is a space created with the residents during writing workshops organized in the spring of 2024 (for schools and CCAS adults). True x-rays of the Vermelles landscape, the texts and drawings have been transcribed into the earth on ceramic plaques, an eternal material, the only survivor of archaeological digs.
The story of people has become writing, poetry. We then repeated ancient gestures to convey letters, drawings, emotions. The glazing of certain pieces is reminiscent of a “memory jewel,” an unforgettable landscape, never found in collective cemeteries.

ADDING FLAVOR
Near the steles, the planting of fruit trees becomes an excuse for picking and cooking in the context of educational workshops at the school or the community center. In front of the community center, productive and participatory gardens enrich the green space! With favorable sunlight and human interactions to come.

AN ACCESSIBLE LAWN
Between the steles, in the shade of the Tulip Tree, the space remains open and accessible. It is a meeting place, theatrical and versatile.

THE BIOCLIMATIC CHALLENGE
The plantings on the edges have been diversified to create favorable refuges for biodiversity.

Created in collaboration with Vianney Duquesnoy (ceramist), with the participation of Jeannette Prin kindergarten, Jules Andrieu school, the central primary school, Paul Éluard middle school, the association La Ruche, the CCAS of Vermelles, and the residents of Vermelles.