It has always seemed there, planted right at the entrances to towns. Familiar and enigmatic at the same time, anchored in the collective unconscious and witness to a process that city dwellers know nothing about. Even the flowers it displays, aligned with a line, hesitate between tulip, rose and poppy. The panel “Cities and villages in bloom”, this French strangeness.
They are very exactly 4,462 municipalities (out of 34 968) to thus exhibit the “National quality of life label”. Go behind the panel is to teleport to France from mid-day news on the first channel. That of villages covered with climbing roses, strewn with hollyhocks, roundabouts with flowered wheelbarrows, tireless volunteers from beautification committees who cut and plant before the sausage aperitif.
Alsatian model
And this has been going on for sixty-two years, madame! In 1959, Robert Buron, Minister of Tourism and Transport under General de Gaulle, launched the “Fleurir la France” competition in the hope that the piles of manure would give way to geraniums, on the Alsatian model cleanliness. Immediate success of “tourist propaganda”, never denied since. The “Villes et villages fleuris” label, which has become associative (financed by members and the horticultural inter-profession), is brewing thousands of applications by playing administrative millefeuille: the municipalities apply to the departments, which propose to the regions, which then allocate up to ‘to “3 Flowers”. For the fourth, supreme distinction (with the “Golden Flower”, vintage Grail), a national jury comes every three years.
To listen to Martine Lesage, director of the label since 1978, recount through the menu the general mobilization preceding this inspection, “The letters to the inhabitants suggesting to bring in the trash cans, the banner of welcome to the national jury, the buffet in town hall”, and “Unworthiness” that represents a demotion on the national floral scale, we measure the stake. “When you say where you live, you get the answer: ‘Oh yes, the beautiful little flowered village!’ “, report VSharlène Carpentier, retired pharmacist and flower manager in Saint-Josse-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), a town whose identity is based on “4 Flowers for forty-five years”.
“Today, we spend less and we do better, with less water and a more natural look. »Martine Lesage, director of the“ Villes et villages fleuris ”label
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