24 hours behind the scenes. 70 employees, 97 hectares to maintain... the hidden side of the Alsace Ecomuseum

It takes a lot of people to maintain the 97 hectares of the Alsace Ecomuseum site in Ungersheim, including 17 hectares for the village itself. France's largest open-air museum employs 50 full-time equivalents, but this figure rises to 70 in the summer with seasonal workers.

▶ Pruning in silence. The four gardeners at Espaces verts start work at 7 a.m. Anthoni Huentz is alone that morning. Until visitors arrive at 10 a.m., he cruises the paths in his Goupil (a small electric utility vehicle) to empty trash cans and open the valves of the automatic watering system. The planters and flower beds in front of the houses also have to be watered manually.

"Normally, there are two of us, and while one does the rounds, the other does maintenance: mowing, pruning, leaf blowing," explains Anthoni. The motorized tools fall silent with the arrival of visitors at 10 a.m. The rest of the day, until 3 p.m., the gardeners work on weeding the paths and pruning...

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