Val de Briey. The Forgotten Gardens are 15 years old: this corner of paradise never ceases to amaze its visitors.

A blue wooden door opens beneath a dry-stone vault. "Welcome," smiles Claude Mallinger. This is how the owner of Les Jardins oubliés welcomes around 250 visitors each year . They come to steal ideas for landscaping or decorating, learn wall-building techniques, or simply get away from it all for half a day. Les Jardins oubliés is truly another world.

“When I arrived here, you couldn't even see the bottom of the plot. It was a jungle. But there were stones everywhere. And I fell in love with it,” says Claude Mallinger. “The principle of the garden is to recycle everything on site, and we have fun repurposing objects. We buy the bare minimum, or even nothing at all...

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