Chaumont - a musical garden

‘Un hommage à Lady Day / a musical garden’ is an evocation of Holiday’s brief but intense life: a deserted black varnished piano and a microphone on a standard are situated amid a white and pink sea of flowers, among which poppies predominate. The jazz classic ‘Body & Soul’ wafts over the wealth of flowers from the piano. This bittersweet spectacle can be viewed from a comfortable jazz lounge that offers a moment's shade to visitors in a garden full of fragile romanticism and addictive love of life.

The skin of the garden is strong and black; its heart is soft and pink. A small black pavilion with lounge sofas spans the entire width of the garden at the entrance. Black curtains frame the garden and close the space off from its surroundings. Inside you find yourself in a different world: you sit on the stage and enjoy the scenery as in a Japanese Zen garden.

The vegetation consists of annuals cultivated beforehand in the Netherlands to ensure enough colour in the garden in the month of May. The dominant pink poppies are an allusion to Billie Holiday’s drug habit. They are interspersed with other flowers, including myosotis, mallow, cosmos, echinacea, anemone, argemone and lavatera to make the garden an explosion of colour throughout the season.