This bewitching garden in Brittany takes topiary to a whole new level thanks to one man’s playful approach to clipping evergreens
WORDS CLAIRE MASSET PHOTOGRAPHS ANNAÏCK GUITTENY
When Jacqueline and Jean Schalit bought Le Grand Launay in 1973, there was everything to do. The 17th-century manor was neglected, the garden overgrown and the surrounding land used for intensive monoculture. Forty years later, the estate was designated a Jardin Remarquable by the French ministry of culture, the highest accolade awarded to gardens in France – among its ranks are Versailles, Villandry and Giverny.
The transformation was achieved thanks to the collaboration of two men: journalist Jean Schalit and garden designer Gaël Boëdec. Jean sadly passed away in 2020, but Gaël remembers their partnership fondly. “We were always exchanging ideas,” he says. Jean had already cleared the ground and added many shrubs and trees to his garden when the two met in 1997. But, as Gaël recalls, when he first saw the site it lacked unity. “The different parts weren’t linked together. There was no sense of destination or invitation to journey.”
What first attracted Jean to Gaël’s work was his unusual use of clipped evergreens – a far cry from the razor-sharp geometry of traditional French topiary. “In my garden I’d created a 40m-long Lonicera hedge with lots of undulations. It looked like a mass of people, except with no heads. Jean really liked the playful element and asked me to visit Le Grand Launay to see what I could do there.” So began their long partnership. For seven years, they saw each other regularly. “We couldn’t transform the whole garden at once, so we did it little by little.” This slow evolution is in tune with the centuries-old site, and the end result is a garden that feels like it belongs.
Gaël started by tackling the existing evergreens: thickets of laurel, camellia and rhododendron. He thinned them in places to allow the gaze to pass through the plantings rather than being cut short. Then he added new plants – beech, box, holly, hornbeam – chosen for their contrasting habits, leaf shapes and, of course, their propensity for clipping. Distinct garden rooms began to take shape and vistas
