Watch the short film by Thierry Passerat

The RD 427 avenue, a 3.3 km long ash tree avenue, is documented at least as of the early 19th century and was replanted in the 1950s. The County road is running through the village of Trampot (Vosges), close to Joan of Arc's birhtplace Domrémy la Pucelle.

It is a very special avenue : due to be felled in 2005, it lead to investigating avenue policies in Europe and drafting of a white book about tree avenues (Road infrastructures - Tree avenues in the landscape) that was published by the Council of Europe as part of the work around the European landscape convention. To ensure its preservation, a bill was drafted and a legal protection of tree avenues in general was eventually integrated into the French environmental code in 2016.

The ash tree avenue is under the pressure of Chalara fraxinea, a fungus causing ash dieback. 24 trees were felled in 2019, out of 271. Some others were felled in 2022. But being situated in an open landscape, the trees resist quite well. The preservation of this avenue is interesting to monitor the resistance to ash dieback. It is also important for the rich biodiversity associated with ash trees.

The dynamics of the evolution of the trees and the avenue serves as a background for an artistic landscape observatory: we invite artists to follow this evolution over the years. The artworks produced will eventually showcase the avenue, for the benefit  of the village of Trampot.

In 2020, 2021, 2022, we invited two artists, Constance Fulda and Ridha Dhib. In 2023, French artist José Le Piez will make his contribution, and in 2024, the american photographer Wayne Gudmundson will add his part to the Observatory.

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