Rouages: "Helping the public to better understand the issues surrounding our plants".

For the past six years, Jean-François Fauveau has been a botanist-gardener at Montpellier's Jardin des Plantes. Between permaculture, monitoring large trees, beehives and communication, he tells us about his job in the "Rouages" video series. Rouages "produced by the University of Montpellier.

On November 30, Jean-François Favier was honored by the Société nationale d'horticulture de France with the Grand Prix in the "gardens and educational plots" category of the national vegetable garden competition.

Did you know that Daubenton's cabbage is a perpetual vegetable that lets you enjoy its leaves all year round? Did you know that fennel perfectly balances out the minor inconveniences of Jerusalem artichokes, that burdock protects your tomatoes from mildew or that marigolds attract ladybugs, which consume aphids? Jean-François Fauveau, botanist and gardener at the Jardin des Plantes, delivers these tips in spades to a public increasingly open to the joys of gardening.

It was after the first confinement that the idea was born to set up a new permaculture edible garden, "a place where you can find fruits, vegetables but also edible flowers and aromatic plants to explain to the people of Montpellier what they can grow if they have a balcony, a terrace, a garden or a plot of several hectares " he explains.

In the shade of the almond tree

Located in the northern part of the garden upstream from the Orangerie, this extraordinary garden offers a gourmet's eye view of an Isabelle vine "an ancient variety once banned on the pretext that it drove people mad; on the contrary, it is resistant to all diseases ", artichokes and apples from Provence, onions, radishes, raw edible quinces, tomatoes, chard as tall as shrubs... All in the shade of a magnificent almond tree.

When he's not in the vegetable garden, Jean-François is busy in the paths of this 4-hectare garden, monitoring the large trees, maintaining the plant collections and ensuring that the paths are as safe as possible for the public. " We have nine gardeners, two of whom work in the greenhouses and one in charge of cultivation. The team also includes a secretary in charge of orders, a taxonomist and a person in charge of seed collections ", all under the leadership of Thierry Lavabre Bertrand, professor of medicine and director of the garden.

Four hives

For a little over a year now, Jean-François Fauveau's schedule has been further enhanced by the installation of four beehives in the garden by the Apiscola association, which specializes in bee education. " This enables us to run events to help the public better understand the issues surrounding our plants, food and bees in an urban context." A relationship with the public that is particularly appreciated by the man who began his career as a landscape gardener working on traffic circles or near freeways. "When you work at the Jardin des Plantes, you don't come in the morning to install plants without ever knowing what will become of them. We install collections that have a thematic, agroecological purpose, and we defend the values that go with it by educating the public. "

Jean-François Fauveau's taste for communication and transmission also stems from his former life as a computer graphics designer who moved from Ile-de-France just under ten years ago to become a landscape gardener. Today, he puts this experience to good use for the garden, feeding the social networks and producing the communications for the annual Primavera event. A unique day when nurserymen, researchers, gardeners, artists and of course the public celebrate the arrival of spring in the garden's exceptional setting. " I design the posters and flyers, I coordinate the day, and after 3 consecutive cancellations, I'm looking forward to getting back to this wonderful event where plants really take center stage. This summer, Jean-François Fauveau will welcome the public for tours of the "Permaculture Edible Garden" on Fridays July 1, 8, 22, 29 and August 5, 12, 19 at 10:30 am.