| Summary: | The cultural codes dictating that plant cultivation should be separated into distinct gardens—orchards, vegetable gardens, flower gardens—tended to disappear at the end of the twentieth century. But the desire to rehabilitate old varieties of fruits and vegetables which has emerged within our urban society is not without its ambiguities, semantic shifts and conceptual twists. For centuries a certain continuity prevailed in the seeds and varieties grown in each orchard and vegetable garden, but the nineteenth century, with the emergence of seed merchants, interrupted this continuity. These offered new cultivars which were the result of scientific and agronomic research dedicated to improved production. But in our changing world which cannot exist without constant dynamics of adaptation, evolution and even instability, the rediscovery of the smells, tastes and flavours of former times, which were all a complex alchemy of respect for the soil and for climatic cycles, and the effort to find old seeds which have been lost, is this not something of a vain search?
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