Lest We Forget

I wrote about this garden on the GardenVisit website, but here I can post many more pictures and give a better overall feel for what the father and son duo of landscape architects are trying to do at Sericourt. Located in Picardie, France near the fields of Azincourt and Flanders, Yves Gosse de Gorre and his son have created a garden full of topiary poetry and symbols that explore the nature of man in this battle scarred land.  The structure is dramatic, softened by thousands of roses in the Spring and Summer, with swathes of poppies lest we forget.


It's a garden of metaphors, some literal, some vague.  Edgy and thoughtful, but with humour never far away.

The Armies of Yew soldiers, Two armies face each other and also look rather uncannily like tombstones.

The Council of War

The 'Avenue of Humanity'

A Dove of Peace takes flight

A Cross marks hope in an area filled with billowing flowers.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)