The La Lironde gardens are part of a larger development project of “garden neighborhoods” introduced by the architect and urbanist Christian de Portzamparc. Our research into the urbanization of peripheral city areas takes as its basis the idea of a discontinuous and fragmented intervention, economical in terms of territory, and anchored within the actual geography. In the center of the park, the built-up areas are concentrated in “islands” formed out of variously-sized buildings. The majority of this piece of countryside found in the middle of Montpellier is left free of buildings, made up rather of a landscape combining a public park with private gardens.

The landscape takes its inspiration from the already present rural elements of the site, its meadows, garrigue scrubland, hedges, and groves, which it then reinterprets. Making the most of the relatively flat areas and the spaces created out of the setting up of retention basins, a succession of flowery meadows brings the different components of the park together in a vegetal continuum. In respecting the topography, a number of embankments are planted in which fencing and retaining walls are hidden in the vegetation.

From east to west, the meadows are punctuated by uncut hedgerows which hide some of the fencing and function in setting the boundaries of private gardens. The parking lots are densely planted using the orthogonal pattern of the buildings. These plantings extend haphazardly into the surrounding spaces, providing shade for the mineral surfaces and establishing a generous and coherent plant presence to match the scale of the territory.