Gardening with the Existing

atelier le balto: Gardens and parks are cultural representations of nature. As designed nature, they depend on care. Yet “nature” is an ambiguous, context-­dependent term, understood differently depending on scientific, cultural, or social perspectives. At atelier le balto, we therefore prefer to work with concrete terms: plant, tree, shrub, woody plant, perennial, bulb. In French, one might say, “Un jardin doit être jardiné”—a garden must be gardened. The way we garden reflects how we relate to our environment today. A garden thus tells us as much about plants as it does about our relationship to them.