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 and 2023. But being situated in an open landscape, the trees still 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 and as a corridor for bats linking the village to the forest.

In 2023, a row of young maples was planted along a path close to the road, on its westward section, to anticipate the future removal of trees.

The dynamics of the evolution of the trees and the avenue serve 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, 2023, we invited Constance Fulda, Ridha Dhib, Julie Ory. In 2024, the acoustic ensemble Angeli Primitivi, the French sculptor José Le Piez and the American photographer Wayne Gudmundson added their own contributions. Click on the years for more details.

2025 is a special year: exactly 20 years after the ash trees were about to be cut down, the photographs of Wayne Gudmundson and the imprints of Constance Fulda will be presented to the public in two exhibitions.

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