Gilles Clément, bornOctober6 1943 in Argenton-sur-Creuse (Indre), is a French gardener, landscape architect, botanist, entomologist, biologist and writer.
After training as a horticultural engineer (1967) and landscape gardener (1969) at the Institut National d'Horticulture et du Paysage in Angers, he has been teaching at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage in Versailles since 1979, alongside his work as a designer. He has traveled extensively around the world, particularly in the southern hemisphere, where he studied the flora of environments with a Mediterranean climate.
In 1977, he settled in Crozant, in the Creuse region of France ; in 1991, he dedicated a book, La Vallée, to his home garden, hidden at the bottom of a valley.
In another book, Le Salon des Berces, published in 2009, he recounts his personal history with this valley, for him " la Vallée des Papillons ". In fact, the Creuse valley was known in the 19th century as the home of a school of painters, the École de Crozant, and is now known as the Vallée des Peintres entre Berry et Limousin. At a symposium held at the Abbaye de Royaumont in Asnières-sur-Oise in 2018, he spoke about this history with two of his oldest landscape artist friends, also based in Crozant, emphasizing that, in the spirit of a school of painting, a school of landscape could be envisaged.
In his Crozant garden, Clément observes and experiments : a secret garden he shares with friends, students and researchers. He invites the curious to visit the gardens of his friends Philippe Wanty and his Arboretum de la Sédelle, and Christian Allaert and his Jardin Clos du Préfons in Villejoint Crozant.
His involvement with the André-Citroën Park in Paris, inaugurated in 1992, the spectacular exhibition on The Planetary Garden he curated in 1999 at the Grande halle de la Villette and his many writings, which constitute both a theoretical and literary body of work, have made him a household name.
In 2011-2012 he held the annual Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France, with an opening lecture delivered on December 1, 2011 under the title " Jardins, paysage et génie naturel ".
In 2017 he won the Books and Seeds Prize at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair, for the book Un grand jardin which he wrote, illustrated by Vincent Gravé. In 2018, he was a guest at the Abbaye de Royaumont in Val-d'Oise. With his gardening friends Philippe Wanty and Christian Allaert, they recount their 40-year friendship, born in this inspiring valley of nature.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles.