In February 2019 and after returning from one of his countless journeys through China, Nicolas Jolivot, a French traveler and illustrator, decides to “slow down” and abandon the life of the last thirty years. “That March, I began to take care of the garden, motivated by the idea of inventorying the contents. After a month (…) I understood that, to an attentive observer, my garden of three hundred square meters is as vast as China.” As a result of meticulous contemplation, which will last two long years, Viajes por mi jardin is born, a delicious book turned into an ode to the pleasure of small things.
During this time, the author takes notes of the transformation that the space experiences month by month; of the flowers and plants, the insects, the birds and the small mammals that inhabit the place, an evolution that helps him to weave together two hundred years of history of the garden and his own family, in first person, as narrator, as a child and as an adult.
The illustrations are a true work of goldsmithing that turn the book into a splendid, delicate and very well documented album. Jolivot does not follow a fixed structure in his story, but rather uses texts of variable size, sprinkled with anecdotes, combined with drawings of flora and fauna also identified with their Latin names, and photo captions that provide complementary information.
Each page is an almost poetic watercolor composition, which moves the reader, with meticulous strokes down to the detail; a full-fledged invitation to discover and admire a nature that alternates its evolution with scenes of everyday life. It is, definitively, a book of history, geology, botany and even geography with ingenious touches.
Published this spring in Spain by Errata Naturae Editores, Viajes por mi corazón was preceded by great acceptance in France, where, acclaimed by critics and readers, it received the Saint-Fiacre awards - the oldest award in the field of gardening. of the country - and the prestigious Pierre-Joseph Redouté.
