Parc du Peuple de l’herbe

Project overview

Making the living environment more attractive by protecting and developing natural areas is one of the Département’s top priorities, especially in the Seine valley.

Around 100 hectares of land formerly used for farming and aggregate mining in the south of the Chanteloup loop currently cut the town of Carrières-sous-Poissy off from the Seine. This large area, which has been classified as a type-2 ZNIEFF (or natural area of ecological, faunistic or floristic interest), includes Ballastières and the farming area of Carrières-sous-Poissy. It is largely undeveloped, tends to be unused and is gradually becoming covered over with vegetation.

For the Conseil départemental and the CA2RS, the best way to ensure that this large open area remained clear and available on a long-term basis and at an affordable cost was to turn it into a vast park, with some minor developments and tailored management.

The future park will play a key role. Because of its location, its geometry and its very nature, this vast, open natural area on the banks of the Seine is at the centre of relations between an urban site and the river. The site is not seen as an isolated area: it stretches up from the river like a beach and is also an edge sloping down from the existing districts and the future new centre of Carrières-sous-Poissy.

The planned park revolves around:

developing the ecological aspect of the site to bolster its role as a link in an ecological continuity;
developing the landscape and the urban surrounds, creating a town/nature transition down to the Seine so that the broader river landscape and the river itself can be used and reclaimed;
encouraging the public to visit the site by providing educational, fun and recreational facilities on the novel theme of insects.

Based on these principles, the park’s facilities have been designed in three broad families that form the gradual transition between the town and nature.

The active strip, as the name suggests, is the park’s everyday living area, seen as a transitional area between the town and the natural environment. It consists of a continuous, fully disabled-accessible path along the urban fringe of Carrières-sous-Poissy: it is the urban face of the Parc du Peuple de l’herbe; Along its entire length, it is dotted with kiosks, playgrounds, allotment gardens and urban games. It draws the bulk of the visitor traffic, so that other areas can remain quiet.
The natural area is the contact patch between the active strip and the bank of the Seine.
The main focal point here is the patchwork of habitats. Every stage of vegetation is present, and each is home to a specific set of fauna and flora. Situated in a sector where ecological concerns are key, the site is mainly composed of fallow prairies, broken up by bramble bushes and copses. These areas of bramble bushes and thickets are home to a number of remarkable, protected species of birds and insects. The fallow land situated between the two ponds is a large open space on the bank of the Seine, and a real asset for the project. It provides a view over the broader Seine valley landscape and the hills. The two ponds bear witness to the site’s past, when it was actively worked, and help give the site the distinctive character that comes from water and land bound up together. This middle ground with “floating” borders (it is situated in a flood zone) is the site’s distinguishing feature.Key points in the park project include restoring and improving the site’s habitats, fauna and flora, maximising the site’s ecological value and its inclusion in the Seine ecological corridor and a future network extending up to the north of the loop.
The bank of the Seine, which stretches over a distance of 2.8km on the right of the project, and the associated riverain plant life form the contact patch between the park and the river on the southern edge. This area along the bank offers a continuous walk along the Seine. Regaining use of the Seine banks will bolster this continuity and pedestrian traffic on paths throughout the Seine corridor. The landscape and ecological aspects of the river bank and the strip of riverain vegetation will be developed. This will entail restoring the riverain strip and creating an alluvial beach. It will take the form of a gently sloping bank planted in a natural manner to provide a gradual ecological transition between the park level and the Seine level, and a transitional area between the aquatic environments of the Seine and the terrestrial environments of the Chanteloup loop. It will be accessible to the public (and to people with reduced mobility) and will provide a new access to the river.