The birdsong is mixed with the breath of the March wind. It rustles the branches of olive trees, pines, oaks… a thousand medium-sized trees sometimes set with garlands and trinkets to mark the memory of the souls who rest at their foot. “It couldn’t be more beautiful,” Luc Chantal is moved as he admires the landscape overlooking the Bono river, in Pluneret (Morbihan). The retired accountant, who fell under the charm of the place, chose Les Jardins de memoire to bury the ashes of two loved ones under a magnolia tree. Today, the sixty-year-old with immaculate white hair can finally breathe: this unique wooded cinerary site is not going to be liquidated like the private company that owned it.
Christian Huc and Jean-Luc Gicquel, also tree owners in Pluneret, perfectly remember the day they learned, in February 2020, of the liquidation of the SARL. While surveying the rural setting of the Gardens with their friend Luc Chantal, they remember the beginnings of their mobilization to prevent the site, which threatened to become a wasteland due to poor management, from closing. “We met for the first time in a bistro. We didn’t know each other, but we said to ourselves that we had to create a collective to prevent the place from disappearing.” remembers the imposing Jean-Luc Gicquel, 70, in his red down jacket too big for him.
The association of tree owners Les Jardins de memoire was born a few days later, in March 2020, with Luc Chantal as president and Jean-Luc Gicquel as secretary. Thanks to their action, families can remain the owners of their tree and responsible for its maintenance at the rate of 150 euros of annual membership to their association.
It was a long road to achieve this result. No register listed the thousand two hundred deceased present and the approximately eight hundred owners, who had nevertheless paid between 3,000 and 4,500 euros for the concession tree, under which one or more biodegradable urns are buried. Added to this tidy sum were 144 euros per year for maintenance. The extensive inventory was completed in March. Some plants did not even have a plaque or name. “It took us six months and more than four thousand six hundred hours of work to get it done,” believes Christian Huc.
Nearly two hundred trees remain unoccupied on the plot today. The free concessions and their maintenance as well as that of the common areas will now return to the municipality of Pluneret, as required by law. “By the end of the year”, hopes, cautiously, its mayor, Franck Vallein (various right), who notes in passing “that there are very few Plunerétains who rest on the site and yet it is their taxes which will be used”.
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