HAS Umpeau (Eure-et-Loir), the festival committee has a crazy dream: to make this village of 400 inhabitants the world capital of garden gnomes. With around forty members and supporters, the association set out to break three “records” associated with this outdoor decorative object, an inexhaustible source of pranks and misappropriations. The first will consist of assembling a collection of more than 2,000 copies. The second brought together more than 500 people in disguise, wearing a pompom hat and a gardening tool. The third to build a “giant” dwarf 9 meters high, with the aim of beautifying the town.
This funny idea came from the head of Laurent Pradié, 45 years old. Management assistant in a construction company in neighboring Yvelines, this newcomer bought the old village school in 2021. Two years of health crisis had then reduced the local events program to little. “Barely ten people came to the galette des rois, the carnival was held without floats or confetti, people no longer went out. I decided to get involved »says this proselytizer of the concept of celebration.
Will soon follow, on his initiative, the creation of a “fear journey” in the streets of the town for Halloween – a sort of walking ghost train combining haunted tunnels and car wrecks. Then a tour of Christmas carols in front of the houses of the village. Finally, the project of “do something more unifying” : “The discussion quickly moved from Santa’s elf to the garden gnome”, explains Laurent Pradié, whose garden is not decorated with any white-bearded gnome. Searches on the Internet and in the Guinness Book of World Records then helped identify three “performances” that could be improved.
“Make grumpy people more relaxed”
Launched on Facebook, a call for donations has, so far, enabled the collection of 240 subjects, much less than the 2,042 held by a British collector named Ann Atkins. “We will be able to do more, probably in 2025”, says Laurent Pradié, in front of a squadron of figurines in plastic, sandstone, resin, wood and ceramic which testify to the fertile imagination of manufacturers of landscape items. A biker leprechaun gives his peers a middle finger; another grabs a selfie stick; a garden dwarf even appears in the middle of this very masculine Areopagus. Most were given nicknames (Réré, Gaga, Lili, Pipo, etc.) during baptism ceremonies celebrated in front of the village pond. Others were taken on vacation, or weekends, by their new owners, and photographed as in The fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain (2001).
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