A botanist's wonderland in Varengeville-sur-Mer
Etang de Launay
A garden has to be beautiful twelve months of the year. Such is the mantra of former antique dealer Jean-Louis Dantec who designed and fashioned Étang de Launay, a 7-hectare estate containing thousands of rare and spectacular species. At Tectona, we have a longstanding interest in gardens so after learning about the level of passion deployed to create this one, T magazine had to go there!
Finding inspiration in the beautiful
To set the scene: imagine a village of 990 souls in the Seine-Maritime département in Normandy bathed in an extensive palette of pastoral greens and white dabs from the English Channel, a setting that since the 19th century has inspired painters such as Monet, Braque and Auburtin. For botanophiles, it is the European capital of gardens. Ten parks, each exceptional in its own right, are waiting to be discovered amid the labyrinthine streets of Varengeville-sur-Mer: Le Bois des Moutiers, a veritable plant museum recently bought by Jérôme Seydoux, who entrusted its renovation to Madison Cox; Le Vastérival, owned by Princess Greta Sturdza, who in her lifetime spread her love of botany to many of the villagers, inspiring vocations.
One of these villagers was art dealer Jean-Louis Dantec, a longtime resident at Louvre des Antiquaires who for over 30 years has been fashioning his own mini Eden at a property belonging to his wife’s family. In the beginning, in 1990, there was only an expanse of pasture and marsh. To create a terrain where plants would thrive, he drained the land, created ponds, constructed natural windbreaks by planting rows of yew trees… Although Jean-Louis Dantec had some knowledge of landscape gardening, he is essentially an aesthete so he turned to a close friend for her gardening nous: Princess Sturdza. “With so many gardens around, there is ample source of inspiration”, he said. “To learn you have to visit museums, and as a plant museum, Varengeville is unique”. Next… “Seventeen years of bulldozers and diggers”.
Collecting plants
Unsurprisingly given his profession, Jean-Louis Dantec has a talent for building up collections. Here he has gathered thousands of species: more than 250 magnolias; Stewartia plants; Gunera manicata, a plant native to South America and iconic to Varengeville-sur-Mer and whose giant leaves cover nearly all the ponds; woody plants, of which Jean-Louis Dantec has one of the largest collections, which includes Betula albosinensis, Arbutus menziesii, paperbark maples, Jacquemontii birches whose bark peels off in small parchment-like strips. Importantly though, high quantity does not mean high density. “Size is critical”, adds our guide. “Otherwise, it’s no longer a garden but nature, quite simply. You have to know how to not plant too much, to keep spaces empty so that the eye doesn’t tire and can see the blue of the sky. There is nothing more artificial than a garden, even if it’s natural”.
