A Living Artwork, A Lifelong Journey

“My garden is my most beautiful artwork,”

said Claude Monet — and I couldn’t agree more.

In 2018, I made the decision to purchase a botanical garden on the verge of permanent closure. It was the only way to save it. The decision wasn’t easy — it came with enormous risk, no guarantees, and a future built entirely on belief. To my knowledge, this is the only botanical garden in Europe that operates without any public funding. That alone makes it both fragile — but also fiercely independent.

I saw the potential beneath the overgrowth. I saw a space where art, nature, and sustainability could exist not as separate things, but as one evolving, living entity.

I made a choice to take monumental risk and so I began. The first phase was all hands and heart: clearing, cleaning, repairing, reviving. We rebuilt spaces and created new ones from scratch. Every corner has been touched by vision and effort — from greenhouses and butterfly enclosures to wild gardens and art installations. Slowly, this once-fading site began to transform into something unique: not just a garden, but a studio, a canvas, a sanctuary.

At the heart of it all is a 60-year vision — a lifelong blueprint for what this garden can become by the time I turn 100. I imagine it as a living artwork, still unfolding. A place where bonsais are carefully shaped like poetry, jazz drifts softly through the trees, and art weaves through every path, greenhouse, and petal. A place where future generations can experience the quiet magic of a world where creativity, ecology, and beauty are not just side by side — but in seamless, natural harmony.

Welcome to a garden that’s not just grown — but dreamed into being.