Œuvre La Tour à eau de Gilles Clément – Le Partage des Eaux

“When we travel through this relief we realize that we must be a geographer-surveyor to be able to trace this line with certainty. A landscaper can only experience the impression given by the landscape, he lacks the measuring instruments. »
Eight million years old, Mont Gerbier-de-Jonc owes its conical shape to cold, viscous lava that was unable to flow. It is at its foot that the Loire has its sources, in three places respectively qualified as geographical, authentic and true sources.
What if the Loire, in addition to the long path it travels to the Atlantic, also flowed into the Mediterranean? This is the beautiful hypothesis that Gilles Clément formulated following an ascent of the Mount after a period of drought where he nevertheless noticed regular seepage in the rock. He then imagines that Mont Gerbier-de-Jonc would function in part as a “water tower”: a principle of water trap based on the condensation of water vapor from clouds in desert regions. The water thus collected would flow at the foot of the Gerbier, towards the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Detail of the basin. Photo: E. Landas (AMCT)
To make this principle visible, Gilles Clément imagined a water tower built from phonoliths, the volcanic rock present in Gerbier. Its shape evokes a lighthouse whose heart is a hollow column. The water condensing on its exterior walls is directed towards the hollow of the Tower, collected in a basin then directed on one side towards the Loire, on the other towards the Rhône.

Creation: 2017
The dry stone project was led by Bernard Maingard, heritage craftsman (mason – stonemason), and by the ELIPS association in Chirols.

Agricultural engineer, gardener, landscaper, writer and teacher, Gilles Clément (born in 1943) began his career as a landscaper in the early 1970s by designing gardens in France and abroad for private clients. In 1977, he created the Garden in Movement, a concept based on the idea of ​​cooperation with nature and resulting from experiments carried out in his own garden. The concept was applied to public spaces in 1983: the commission for Parc André Citroën in 1986 gave him the opportunity to apply it on a large scale.

Gilles Clément has designed numerous gardens including those of the Musée du Quai Branly and the Domaine du Rayol. A thinker and theoretician, he is also the inventor of several now famous concepts, such as that of the planetary garden which envisages in a joint and entangled way the diversity of beings on the planet and the managerial role of man in the face of this diversity.

The Chaumasse
At almost 1 meters above sea level, La Chaumasse is the land of choice for cattle who spend beautiful summers there! In the past, the hiking trail was a trail to allow their transhumance from the plains of Gard to the high plateaux. The landscape is breathtaking: south-east, the Mediterranean in the distance, north-west, the Atlantic in the distance... Here the marmots point their noses, a couple of Northern Harriers come to hunt, the rare lycopods have found an environment to their extent, ... biodiversity flourishes.

Directions
Between Mont Gerbier-de-Jonc and Lachamp-Raphaël, at the crossing of the D378 at the top of the Bourlatier pass, the entrance to the GR420 track is marked by a “Watershed Line” sign.

Possibility of parking in a grassy parking lot along the track. It is strictly forbidden to park in front of the Water Tower.
Parking is also possible at the Ferme de Bourlatier located approximately 100m away.
Access is possible by hiking from the village of Sagnes-et-Goudoulet along the GR 420.

As part of the summer PROGRAMMING, guided tours are offered by the Park with the Passeurs du PARTAGE DES EAUX on each of the works of the route (see Agenda section).