Celebrating Visionaries in Bamboo Innovation

Some might say Yves Crouzet has had a charmed life, having the opportunity to live and work among two beautiful bamboo gardens in southern Europe. His earlier life was centered in the South of France, actively developing the magnificent estate of La Bambouseraie de Prafrance. This paradise of a garden was started in 1855 and contained an important collection of bamboos. In 1976 his wife had inherited this place from her grandfather, Eugene Mazel (1826 – 1890), and with their combined efforts, and four children, La Bambouseraie became the most sought-after private garden in France, with 350,000 visitors a year. There he fell in love with the bamboos, and the 1980s brought a great deal of travel for Mr. Crouzet, as he set out around the world in search of new bamboo species to enrich the collection. These trips resulted in an important network of international contacts and initiatives to promote bamboo abroad and led to the creation of the European Bamboo Association, which later broke into national societies throughout Europe starting as the French Bamboo Society. After attending the first international bamboo conference in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico hosted by the American Bamboo Society, Yves hosted and organized the Second World Bamboo Congress at La Bambouseraie in 1988. With this, La Bambouseraie became a mecca for bamboo enthusiasts from everywhere, and bamboo became a very trendy ornamental plant throughout European gardens.

With an expanding collection of bamboos that had never been grown in Europe, Yves became aware of erratic winters that were damaging the more tender bamboos, and he knew he needed to find a better climatic region for growing as many types of bamboo as possible. Over thirty years ago he bought 100 hectares of land at Herdade das Fontes, in São Teotónio, Odemira, Portugal. Located 200 km south of Lisbon, close to the Atlantic coast, it now produces temperate bamboo, some resistant to -20ºC and many species of tropical bamboo. To his delight, bamboos grew better and much faster here. He grew the nursery, growing many species in all sizes of containers, and quickly became the epicenter of a business fueled by orders from garden centers, landscapers, pharmaceuticals and even zoos from all over Europe. La Bambouseraie de Prafrance had been his home, garden, business and focus until in 2005, when he moved to Portugal full-time.

Yves’ dream has proven that subtropical bamboos have a home in southern Europe.

The nursery and park now employ over 30 people, and it continues to work in partnership with La Bambouseraie and Les Pepinières de la Bambouseraie nurseries, although they are completely independent entities.

He is not just a nurseryman; he is an expert. Yves has authored several books: Les bambous, published by RUSTICA in 1981 (second edition 1999, third edition 2008); Des bambous dans tous les jardins, co-authored with Michel Jeury, published by RUSTICA, 1996; Bambous, in partnership with the French naturalist photographer Paul Starosta and edited by Taschen in 1998, then translated into German, English and Dutch; Les Bambous: Les espèces, la plantation, l'entretien, published by RUSTICA, 1999; Bambous, co-authored with Christine Recht, Max F. Wetterwald, and Werner Simon, published by Eugen Ulmer, Paris, 2000; La bambouseraie, un jardin de bambous, co-authored with Louisa Jones, published by Actes Sud, 2004; Les bambous pas à pas : Optez pour un esprit neuf dans votre Jardin, co-authored with his son, Simon Crouzet, published by 2005; Travailler le bambou, co-authored with Bresson, Aïté; Keomany, Ouneheuane, published in 2005; and Bambous: Utilisations - Culture – Espèces, published by RUSTICA, 2016.

He also wrote many articles for the European Bamboo Society newsletter, presented at national and international conferences, guided tours to hundreds of tourists, continues to mentor students, as well as teaching every day to anyone asking about bamboo!

When Yves talks about bamboo, his passion for the plant is immediately revealed. He is a great storyteller, a collector, a historian, a grower, a designer, a traveler and still, a student, yearning to learn all there is about bamboo. To quote Yves: “Bamboo is a plant that has always fascinated me because it is such a prodigal plant that it can be used for a wide variety of purposes: construction, musical instruments, irrigation pipes, decoration, soil fixing and even food. Today, I am convinced that it will not be just that. Between man and bamboo, a magical complicity was established. Whether for the gardener, for the craftsman, for the painter, for the poet, for the philosopher, or for everyone else. The sight, the contact, the shadow, the whisper of the bamboo, reassures, inspires, and enriches. For millennia, different civilizations have known this. In the West, we are now discovering the inexhaustible possibilities of this plant”.

In the Bambuparque, there is a bamboo pavilion, built in accordance with the traditional bamboo construction rules of Brazil. It stands as an example of the application of bamboo to the world of architecture. Yves wants to design more bamboo houses, following the different building styles in other countries like Japan, China, and Colombia. He wants to show the potentials of bamboo as a sustainable building material. These are to be built for tourism, and used for workshops and meetings to promote bamboo, to teach about bamboo in its most diverse applications.

For Yves, there is no stopping point. He continues to pioneer all that can be done with bamboo, for the good of the region, southern Europe and the planet. We are so very fortunate that he can be with us at this 4th World Bamboo Workshop. Merci, Yves!