Since the 1950s, trees have gradually been transformed into a powerful landscaping motif of the Hortillonnages gardens, dispelling memories of the original bare marshland. Although their roots today help to stabilise the islands, this recent wooded stratum is today a cause for concern for the Hortillons gardeners, who see in it a worrying signal of the closing in of the environment, far removed from the fields with open views which the first market gardeners cultivated. Designed by l’Atelier Landscriptum, this Jardin des cimes harvests the leaves from the willows and poplars. In the shade of a copse of trees, the 500 m² of an immense net, an aerial and slender backdrop suspended from the foliage, thus becomes clothed in shades of gold, brown and orange in autumn. Like a poetic allusion to the imagination of Italo Calvino and his Baron in the Trees, this suspended corner of nature, entrusted to the green fingers of a treetop gardener, benefits from a slow and invisible process, that of the decomposition of leaves into a fertile growing medium.

L’Atelier Landscriptum is an open laboratory for experimentation in landscaping, land and the city, which brings together three engineer-landscape designers, Alexandre Libersart, Nicolas Orgelet and Maryline Tagliabue. Each one brings their particular skills to the project, acquired during complementary career paths: Alexandre Liebersart creates gardens, Nicolas Orgelet designs public space projects while Maryline Tagliabue works on cultural development projects.