I had the immense privilege of getting to visit this little sanctuary in the low Alps of France at the end of winter in 2026. Cougourdane is a small holding near Sisteron, with a lot of heart! The owner of this upcoming retreat venue had a lot of ideas, but his background is in architecture. We were able to brainstorm together and come up with a site plan that not only honours his vision, but also the rhythm of the land. 

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This property hadn't been used for commercial farming in decades, but the evidence of soil disturbance was nonetheless evident; including in the local area, where five decades ago, there had been mass deforestation done by the logging industry. Erosion was a big player in my site analysis, not only because of its presence in the local area, but also because the owner had unknowingly been overgrazing two horses on steep slope. The previous owner of the property had put in two large pools and a dam on the south-facing slope, this leveraged an ideal position (next to an older orchard) for some contour earthworks. I proposed two swales for water & silt catchment, as well as a terrace on the south-westerly slope to negate the weight of snow build-up on the fruit trees in winter. This weight was clearly disadvantaging a large portion of the orchard, including aggravating disease, increasing evaporation in summer (due to fast run-off on the steep gradient and a lack of water retention in the soil) and decreasing fruit production. The two swales will minimise flood risk and let the land act more naturally like a sponge: both soaking up the water collected as well as hydrating groundwater reserves. 

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Water management was first on my list of priorities and next came landscape design and disease mitigation of the ageing orchard. The owner was not intimately familiar with pruning, so I began pruning and writing out a detailed document on the importance of pruning for disease mitigation, a thorough breakdown of how and when to prune depending on the tree species and intended use of the tree (ie. fruit production, cross-pollination, aesthetic, etcetera). Then came the gardens: there was an existing potager garden being maintained by a third-party, which was primarily used for vegetable and herb production (for personal use). The property was busy being geared towards hosting wellness retreats, so the owner proposed designing a walk-through perennial garden leading to the yurt where the workshops would be hosted. As well as that, they wanted a circular sensory garden surrounding the fishpond below the orchard, adjacent to the horse paddock.

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