The Natural Agricultural Park is part of the “Water and Landscapes” project aimed at the planning and development of the public and landscape spaces of six sites across the greater Nantes St. Nazaire estuary area. The strategic, localized, and coordinated interventions that make up the project have as their objective the creation of a communal cultural and landscape identity, recognizable at a metropolitan scale.

On the left bank of the Loire River and downstream from Nantes, between La Montagne, Le Pellerin, and Bouguenais, three hundred hectares of land have come under strong pressure of being urbanized. This agricultural enclave, officially classified as an ENS (Sensitive Agricultural Space), has remained nonetheless for the most part untouched due to its liable to flooding character. The bocage landscape is squarely divided up by hedges and small canals that help drain off the marshy pastures. The visual horizon lines are short, the presence of the Loire not very obvious. Due to its isolated character, the site today has begun to be abandoned, and is threatened with being closed and silted up.

The recovery of these plots of land takes place through the creation of a large Metropolitan Agricultural Park on the outskirts of Nantes. The park represents a future edge to the city, and has as its purpose, starting from the present, the clear definition of a landscape structure. We based our project on the already existing agrarian layout in order to open up the site, reconciling agricultural development with the new functions of the territory which respect its setting (pedagogical, scientific, touristic). This natural park is crossed from east to west by a bicycle path as well as by pathways. Two garden loops lead to the Loire and provide the opportunity to rediscover the wider landscape. Along the riverbanks, small stations are set up as observation spots and for various operations dedicated to the restoration of the site's natural state.