Living work adorning parks or replacing street furniture in cities, mosaiculture plunges us into the world of dreams and creativity.
What is mosaiculture?
Mosaiculture consists of a thoughtful arrangement of plants of various colors and shapes to create paintings, walls or even real sculptures. The motifs represent most often coats of arms, texts or images corresponding to a city which they define in particular on the roundabouts, in the public parks or in a strategic place. Sometimes it is monumental plant sculptures representing fantastic or real animals, mythical or fairy scenes in 3 dimensions. On this type of ground, the mosaiculture reaches then its apogee.
This art, very popular on the other side of the Atlantic, especially in Canada where very prestigious competitions are held each year, is not yet widespread in our country. However, it deserves a particular interest because the works can be of great beauty.
A complex implementation
The mosaiculture is developed from a drawing pre-established by the artist or ordered by the project manager who can be a community, a municipality or even a private individual. The mosaiculture bed is the simplest to implement because the work is done horizontally and directly in the earth. The plants are then "simply" arranged in order to compose a harmonious scene.
The technique is a little more complicated for the dressed walls because it is then necessary to work with the verticality and the concerns of balance and watering that this imposes, but it is nothing compared to the works in 3 dimensions, often of gigantic appearance carried by structures. The metal form is then installed and anchored to the ground, then covered with a wire mesh that will be filled with a substrate that is both very fertile and retains enough water. This substrate is generally composed of peat, plant fibers, fertilizer with progressive assimilation but also a little clay. It all depends on the perfect balance of this mixture and its proper placement on the structure. Then come the plants that will be chosen according to the climate but also specific criteria such as resistance and color.
The maintenance will have to be constant, in particular concerning the watering and the operations of size.
The best plants to create a plant mosaic
Plants with colored foliage will be favored in this type of landscaping. They should be adapted to the climate and exposure of the work but should also be able to accept regular pruning operations or keep a compact habit naturally. Slow-growing and easy-to-cultivate plants are preferred for their ease of maintenance. Among them, succulents such as Echeverias and sedums, grasses such as Festuca glauca, but also plants with silvery foliage such as Senecio cineraria, Chrysanthemum parthenium "Aureum" or Santolin. Among the flashy foliage we find the Alternanthera ficoida, the coleus, the iresine or the Bassia scoparia.
The flowering plants can also be part of these compositions. The most used in mosaiculture are Petunias miliflora, lobelias, begonias semperflorens but also ageratum, celosia cristata, tagetes or maritime alysses.
