She calls him Georges, as if he were an old friend. In fact, it almost became one.
For almost ten years, Guénaëlle Daujon worked on the life of Georges Delaselle, the creator of the garden on Île de Batz, off the coast of Roscoff, in Finistère. She wrote a book from it, soberly titled George’s garden. A fiction for which the author has researched extensively.
Before storm Ciaran, the Georges-Delaselle garden, on the island of Batz, constituted an intimate cocoon thanks to the trees which formed a protective barrier. West France
Georges Delaselle came to settle on the island in 1918, at the age of 57, to create on “a sandy moor exposed to all the winds”, an exceptional botanical garden. Sick with tuberculosis, the man defied statistics. He died in 1944, at age 82, much later than doctors expected. “The garden will heal it, fulfill all its desires, nourish it at all levels,” affirms the author.
1,700 species
Coming to the island, the gardener left behind “the world of insurance in which he worked, but also the worldliness of plunging almost to excess into the world of plants”. Today, the garden has more than 1,700 species from all continents.
Read also: In Finistère, the Île de Batz garden selected for the Heritage Loto
Guénaëlle Daujon met « Georges » upon his arrival on the island in 2004. “I went from Paris to the north of Île-de-Batz,” she said smiling. She, who then worked in the audiovisual sector, became a journalist. With Georges Delaselle, she made the same journey a century apart…
Except that if he “managed to take root here”, the author left the island after six years. But when it was time to leave this little piece of land behind her, she wanted to “to leave with this story, that of Georges”.
After the passage of storm Ciaran in Finistère, in 2023, the Île de Batz garden is recovering. West France
She first plans a documentary film, “but the archives were too poor”. So she turns to the novel. To evoke Georges Delaselle, she speaks of a character “romantic. He transformed a place and he transformed himself. »
His first link with the gardener, “it was his writing, very 19the which, over time, becomes fragile… His letters touched me a lot. » The association Les Amis du jardin Georges-Delaselle gave him access to his documents.
The garden of Île de Batz (Finistère), in 2024, during its opening day after storm Ciaran. West France
In his novel, “all the meeting points between the characters, the dates, are true and documented, just like the plants in the garden”. It’s for writing “reactions” of the gardener that Guénaëlle Daujon has “dared to enter his body and his head, imagine his thoughts. It took me a while to feel like I was right. »
The Island of Batz (Finistère), seen from the sky. Vincent Mouchel / Ouest-France
“Pioneer of botany in Brittany”
Throughout the pages, the author tells Georges Delaselle. “He came from another world for the islanders. Doing all this work for flowers seemed incomprehensible. » However, he is not discouraged.
“He is someone who has slipped into a form of great passion. He became a very delicate, intelligent, pioneering gardener, pioneer of botany in Brittany…”
George’s GardenEd. Intervalles, 192 pages. €18.
