The Tuileries Garden returns to its past thanks to an alley of elms in its middle connecting the Arc du Carrousel to the Concorde, which will make this park in the heart of Paris less mineral and more pleasant.
On Monday, the last two of the 92 elms were planted on one of the two alignments surrounding the “Grande Allée”.
Jean-Luc Martinez, the president and director of the Louvre, on which the Tuileries depend, came to give a final symbolic shovel to this original site.
26 freestone benches have been renovated.
Parterres were vegetated, flower beds were planted with flowers inspired by exhibition themes.
These arrangements are the result of the 2020 edition of the “Tous Mécènes” operation, launched last September, by which 4,500 donors gave one million euros to the Louvre.
Trees and benches could be sponsored by individuals.
A metal capsule resembling a large shell was buried at one end of the driveway.
It contains around a hundred messages, collective (drafted by department) or individual, in which Louvre agents expressed what they felt about their museum and its mission in this Covid year and how they saw the Louvre in forty years.
They are confidential and will not be revealed until 2061 when the capsule is unearthed.
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The 23-hectare park, frequented by 16 million people per year, was imagined during the reign of Catherine de Medici based on a model of Florentine gardens.
Then in the 17th century, André Le Nôtre, creator of the gardens of Louis XIV, had designed this path leading to the countryside, where the Place de la Concorde is located.
The elms had been felled during the Revolution, giving the park a mineral appearance.
"
There is a symbolic character in what we do in a period of uncertainty: planting trees that will be there in 30, 50, 100 years, reminds us that, in heritage, we are working for generations to come
", a underlined Mr. Martinez.
Now it will be necessary to preserve these elms.
Gardeners will do three years of "
feeding
" to give them enormous quantities of water.
Tensiometric probes on the trunks will measure the capacity of the soil to supply the tree with water.
Since 2010, the “
All Patrons
”
campaigns
have gathered more than 27,000 donors for various renovation projects at the Louvre.