Jardin de Nous Deux

The Garden of Us Two (“Le Jardin de Nous Deux”)

An example of what is normally called “art brut,” or “outsider art,” the Garden of Us Two is a decorated garden, built by one man after his retirement, near Lyon (i.e., near me!). I finally visited it on one of the Journées du Patrimoine last weekend. (These are September weekends in France in which normally closed historic sites are open to the public, including private castles, protected churches, etc.) It’s really odd, because it’s a modern house, in a modern housing suburb, but the yard is packed with fantastic sculptures of mini palaces, towers, decorated columns, and grottos, all inspired by the travels of Charles Billy and his wife Pauline.

The house itself — the "thoroughly ordinary" house the garden grew around.

About Charles Billy

The garden sculptures are the work of Charles Billy, and the panel they have on site describes a life that explains the decor. (You can see the panel pics at the bottom of this post.)

  • Born in 1910, of modest background. He was an early employee of the Frères Lumière in Lyon, famous for early film invention.
  • He was a serious athlete (a diving champion) and, the panel notes, someone who shared with his inspiration Ferdinand Cheval (see below) “a taste for hard labour” and for pulling off feats of endurance.
  • His work life was in the “trades”: pile driver, crate nailer, wood machinist, then 26 years as a pattern cutter for girdles, bras, and corsets, and finally a shoe maker.
  • He died in 1991 of a heart attack, while working on one of his sculptures. His wife Pauline died ten years later.
Billy at work in his workshop, carving.

His inspiration, the Facteur Cheval

Billy visited the nearby Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval in 1968, which I have also visited and it does indeed feel similar; this was the trigger for everything that grew in Billy’s yard. What the two men had in common, the panel text says, was hard labor conceived as a sporting feat — Cheval’s quote, “Au champ du labeur j’attends mon vainqueur.”

Billy’s version of their comparison, from a France 3 report:

“I have one advantage over him, which is that I have a car and he didn’t; I’ve travelled and he never left Hauterives. But otherwise I think we’re the same men, we resemble each other.”

Charles Billy himself, in a photograph displayed on site, standing in front of his own castle.

The start

With wife Pauline he settled originally in Vaulx-en-Velin, where in 1973 he made his first sculpture — a cement crocodile. They were pushed out that same year when the town built an urban housing estate, and they bought an ordinary modern suburban house in Civrieux-d’Azergues, between Lyon and Villefranche. This town is where I do my main grocery shopping, incidentally. I biked to his garden on Sunday of the Patrimoine weekend. (And discovered a flat tire when I tried to head home, but luckily succeeded in getting an Uber.)

From his retirement in 1975 onward Billy filled the garden with sculptures and architectural “mockups” in the local “pierres dorées” (golden stone, a southern Beaujolais thing), dominated by Asian and medieval/Romanesque influences from travels with his wife, abroad and locally in Beaujolais. Indeed the many stone pillar capitals look very local Romanesque.

"Les voyages de Charles et Pauline Billy" — a map with the trips that he and his wife took, up at the house on Sunday.
"La Tour du Beaujolais" — the carved plaque and its figure, beside a twisted column capital. Romanesque.

The new owners of the current house

An article in the local Le Progrès (Villefranche–Beaujolais–Tarare edition, Sunday 1 August 2021, page 21; by Marie-Noëlle Toinon) covered the garden’s change of hands (also up as a photo on Sunday). I had AI help with this translated summary.

  • The garden was saved from destruction when the house was sold in 2001. Previous owners appreciated it but never really maintained it; but conscious of living somewhere exceptional, they opened it to visitors once a year.
  • In April 2021 the house was bought by Stéphanie Fito and Dimitri Loisel, a young couple returning from five years in Qatar — him a sales manager at Switchmade France, her training as a professional photographer. They fell for the garden on the spot.
  • Their first reactions, quoted in the piece: “At first I thought it was just a crazy thing, nothing more!” (Dimitri); “We were like children who’d found a beautiful toy!” (Stéphanie). Four months in, they said they were still finding new architectural details every day — a statuette hidden by the vegetation, a symbol inside a temple, a turret, an inscription.
  • Alain Moreau, president of the Caladoise association Art brut en compagnie, confirms there is no other site of this kind in the region. The garden is catalogued in several works on art brut.
  • Billy built the garden stone by stone over sixteen years — châteaux, porticos, towers and turrets, statues and figurines — conceiving it as a route echoing other cultures and other landscapes. A “bon vivant”, he left out neither women (sometimes in suggestive poses) nor wine, with repeated nods to the Beaujolais. The article calls it a “petit Alhambra.”
  • The new owners set to work immediately clearing and cleaning the first structures: “You can’t let a site like this fall apart. We want to share it!”
  • Le Progrès ends by suggesting the Jardin de Nous Deux could become an unmissable stop on a new kind of tourism (presumably, seeing weird local sites?).

It’s currently accepting donations for upkeep, restoration, and preservation, both on visits and on the Fondation du Patrimoine page, where you can give a donation for restoration.

The Fondation du Patrimoine plaque and the Géoparc Mondial UNESCO Beaujolais medallion by the entrance.

More Photos

A whole miniature village in pierres dorées running along the garden wall — houses, a church, towers.
The windmill and the long arcaded viaduct.
A carved capital: a face under the arch, with braided stonework below.
A tiled niche — patterned and painted ceramic tiles set into the golden stone.
One of the Oriental-influenced temples, a stepped tower in reddish stone.
A shrine of three carved figures under a fretted arch, framed by bamboo.
Towers, domes and finials against the sky.
The dense cluster of spires and clock tower at the heart of the garden.
A tall tower with its hand-lettered stone sign, and a pavilion behind.
A castle with red-roofed turrets — one of the more medieval-leaning maquettes.
A carved relief panel: a craftsman at his bench, with animals along the top border.
The big ensemble with the clock tower, seen whole.
A lion bracket set into the wall, with carved figures underneath.
A pool.
Odd juxtaposition of the ordinary house and these creations...
Clock tower, another side.
Thai temple with walkway underneath.

More of the Texts in Photos

The info panel on site: "16 ans de travail par amour, entrepris à l'âge de 65 ans, sans plan, sur 1500 m2 de terrain vierge en pente" — sixteen years of work for love, begun at 65, with no plan, on 1500 m² of sloping virgin ground.
"Lettre de Charles Billy du 8 avril 1988" — the transcribed letter in which he tells his own story: the expropriation from Vaulx-en-Velin in 1973, 1500 m² at Civrieux with not a stone on it, hauling the golden stones himself, leaving school at twelve and a half, and retiring at 65 in 1975.
More of the letter: the trades — pile driver, crate nailer, wood machinist, almost always on piecework — and the night classes in corset-and-girdle pattern cutting, where he came first in a class of forty.
The letter in his own hand, beside its transcription: building without any preconceived plan, and the February 1978 night spent casting a seven-metre porch lintel in −4°C.
Le Progrès article.

The official website.

The Atlas Obscura article, before the new owners bought it.

artfrancetravel