There are walls we no longer notice. Grey, tagged, forgotten surfaces. Then one morning, walking past, we stop. Because the wall has disappeared under a giant field of flowers, and a blue butterfly seems ready to fly away.
The grey dune, a discreet treasure 100 meters from the beach
In Pornichet, when we talk about Bonne Source, we first think of the beach. Few people know the other Bonne Source: a natural area of nearly four hectares located just off the coast. It's called the grey dune. No white sand or waves here, but a rare ecosystem, unique in the entire Guérande peninsula.
This patch of nature is home to species found almost nowhere else in the area. The dune grasshopper, a small butterfly called the Gorse Azure, the sea daffodil, the dune carnation, and the spider orchid — a wild orchid. The town of Pornichet has been protecting this site for several years, with a program that includes an inventory of flora and fauna, marked paths to limit trampling, and the removal of invasive plants that threaten the balance of the environment.
It's a discreet place. You have to look a bit to find it. And that's precisely what makes it endearing.
From tag to fresco: the idea of a wall that tells the story of the dune
On the edge of this dune is the boundary wall of a property. For years, this wall accumulated tags. It was an eyesore in the landscape, like an affront to the place it bordered.
The Association de Protection du Cadre de Vie de Bonne Source (APCVBS), which has been watching over this site for 35 years, proposed a simple idea to the town hall: transform this degraded wall into an artistic medium. Marc Doizon, vice-president of the association and former head of SEMITAN in Nantes, had already seen this strategy work. At SEMITAN, regularly tagged walls had been entrusted to street artists. The result: once a signed fresco is installed, the vandalism stops. Art commands respect.
The town said yes. The Nantes collective "100 Pression", active for over twenty years throughout France, was chosen for the project.
Thirteen meters of biodiversity spray-painted
In November 2025, the collective's artists got to work. Their approach: to tell the story of the dune on the wall. They drew on the species inventory carried out by the town and chose the most visual, the most striking ones.
The result is thirteen meters long and over three meters high. It features the sand immortelle with its small, ball-shaped yellow flowers, sea daffodils, pines leaning in the wind, an azure butterfly with blue and orange wings, a praying mantis resting among mauve asters. The artists wanted to transpose vertically what lives horizontally in the dune, just on the other side of the wall.
The colors sometimes recall Japanese prints. It is both precise and poetic, documented and free.
The image I wanted to keep
I often pass through Bonne Source. I live in Pornichet, it's my neighborhood, my walking paths. When I discovered the fresco, I immediately wanted to photograph it.
What struck me was the dialogue between the painted wall and the real vegetation around it. In the second photo, we see a bush in bloom in the foreground, with the fresco in the background. The painted nature and the living nature respond to each other, almost like a mirror. It is this juxtaposition that I wanted to show: the dune drawn on the concrete, and the real dune right next to it.
I like the idea that a wall that was an eyesore has become an extension of the landscape. That people now stop to look at it instead of looking away.
If this image speaks to you, it is available as a premium matte paper print, starting from €9.
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