Benjamin and Gautier La Combe: “You might say cities have literally cut us off from our roots”

“Actions speak louder than words” is the motto of Benjamin and Gautier La Combe, two brothers who graduated from the EDHEC Grande École programme in 1999 and 2002 respectively, to which Benjamin added a vocational diploma in landscaping from Tecomah and Gautier added a Masters in the architecture of historic gardens from the ENSAV. 

Together they run MUGO, which was founded in 2009 and aims to restore the rightful place of nature in cities. The firm is peculiar in that it addresses both aesthetic and functional design, with one division dedicated to creating landscape spaces and another to their upkeep. Their projects include urban farms, vegetable gardens and hives, as well as green walls, and are rolled out by a team of 350 gardeners. Gautier looks after the firm’s commercial development and communication, while Benjamin is in charge of operations, strategy and finance. They joined us to share their complementary views on the changes in their sector in the 21^st century. 

What observations about society and the environment encouraged you to develop MUGO?

GLC: For me gardens have been a passion since childhood. This sector includes many small businesses, and so we wanted to develop an innovative offer on a market that is relatively unstructured. I had been working at JCDecaux and Benjamin at Sodexo. We applied what we had learned at those major firms, whose leitmotivs are service quality and innovation, to a very tangible manual activity.

BLC: Gardens are the medium, but above all I wanted to work with people. What holds our company together is not so much its commercial dynamic as our capacity to create a sense of humanity with our staff. Gardens are a world of marvel but also intuition. The hardest challenge, given the company’s size, is making sure that staff continue to be happy at work. And that difficulty is not so much linked to green spaces, but rather the culture of today’s world. The market uses biodiversity as a means of communication rather than as a reality. 

When you collaborate with a business, do you take into account the positive impacts for society?

BLC: Financial realities are such that the impact of businesses takes a back seat. MUGO is unusual in that design, the work on the ground and the subsequent upkeep are usually covered by separate markets, with distinct companies. There are high expectations among staff and civil society when it comes to gardens and living spaces, but the creativity at the start of a project – with wooden terracing, beehives and vegetable gardens – is reduced to its simplest expression as the work nears completion for cost-related reasons.

GLC: Benjamin is essentially talking about the private sector here. Property developers see green walls and roofs as a cost centre. Our real focus at the moment is to defend our already low margins and our prices, and above all – this is political – to encourage legislation that imposes greening criteria on both public and private entities, thereby influencing the economic reality of our business.

BLC: It’s legislation that will change things. In Paris, where stone has a strong presence, developers know they will gain an extra few million by constructing a three-storey building, so the return on investment if they put in a ground floor garden instead of a few m² of construction is virtually nothing, even though everyone wants one. 

Would you say there is a poor understanding of the costs involved in your business sector?

BLC: Yes, although that’s mainly because of the market structure. On the one hand, France is now deindustrialised, and on the other there is just one set of major firms eroding a multitude of SMEs like ours. There is a real dichotomy here. The big firms have retained the value added of their original business and outsourced to companies like us all of the services associated with low value added that were of no interest to them.  

GLC: A global movement to outsource so-called “non-strategic” general services and functions has spread throughout major firms. The world has seen the emergence of facility management companies, offering multiple services and labour with low value added, and these have themselves become multinationals. We have followed their path. MUGO combines design, consultancy, works and upkeep, we have beekeepers and florists, but the very valuable ecosystemic services rendered to the city, such as making the ground permeable again or creating urban cool islands, are not taken into account by the real estate and facility management sectors.

But is it enough for a company to settle for a few green spaces, while civil society appears to be demanding much more?

BLC: It’s quite paradoxical. Companies need them to attract personnel, but at the same time half of their staff members are asked to work from home. Office space has decreased twofold in favour of open plan, people come and go, and so the workspace is becoming less and less strategic. As long as the “green” dimension stays in the hands of purchasers rather than CSR, it can’t be properly valued. Big players with a lot of real estate are sitting on a goldmine. How are we to promote these green spaces that absorb CO₂? Some of our clients have 50 acres of woodland, but they see it as a cost burden, even though they could use it to lower their carbon footprint or make it into a biodiversity zone. If the law compels companies to be autonomous in terms of CO₂ absorption, in particular through green spaces, the green portion of their real estate would take on strategic importance. It is also up to us to encourage greater awareness of that.

What’s your vision of the city of the future?

BLC: The key will be decreasing the proportion of stone in public places. As little as 5 or 10 years ago, squares as big as 100m² were being made entirely from stone (e.g. Place de la République in Paris). Expectations have changed, with more demand for vegetation. The space between each tree should now be occupied by a strip of earth rather than tarmac or parking spaces for bikes. I think the future lies in green belts and green infrastructure. Nature must be allowed to regain its place in the city, where it is currently compartmentalised. We can see how nature brings back a sense of meaningfulness in newly created living spaces, but it’s a political choice. Should we prioritise social housing for underprivileged segments of the population or a park/garden that will benefit all of society, and not only the most vulnerable, by providing a shared living space? 

GLC: The real issue is getting fewer people to live in cities, reducing the pressure on land usage so we can rebalance urban and rural spaces, no longer concentrating all the inhabitants and economic wealth in major cities. 

BLC: In our business, which is a bit idealistic but you might say in the general interest, we constantly come face-to-face with the realities of today’s world. When you consider the urgency as well as our capacity to act, it’s clear that everything could be put in motion right away. But creating natural areas and cities means tearing down existing spaces, transforming those with no vegetation and removing social housing. The “only” beneficiaries would be the atmosphere, the planet and our living environment, not the stakeholders currently in play. A world vision cannot be imposed by force. We can only move forward step-by-step. Objectively speaking, over the last 10 years major transformations have taken place at the level of citizens, but at a pace that society is willing to adopt, which is not the pace required by the climate emergency.

What is the role of the State in this debate on increasing the presence of vegetation in cities?

BLC: Mayors make their towns and cities more dense because they have no culture of urban vegetation and because they need to be re-elected. I’m not blaming them, because ways have to be found to house the entire population, constrained by economic and social imperatives. The State doesn’t have the same interests. It alone can guarantee the creation of natural spaces, for nature is always the last in line: a tree won’t shout or cry, green spaces don’t have legal representation, they have no-one to defend them. And I’m not even talking about the visual and social impact. Everyone says there are fewer natural spaces and less wildlife, but people don’t see what they can do to change things. And the State and its local partners have neither the financial clout nor the political will necessary. Public stakeholders in particular should be aware of these two things because they are the guardians of societal equilibrium and the equilibrium of nature. 

GLC: In the presidential debate in France, almost no-one is talking about the environment. The genuine interest among citizens in seeing nature in their urban spaces has been relegated to the background. Housing, terrorism, immigration and purchasing power remain the primary concerns of our leaders. The urban agriculture that we advocate has more than a purely productive vocation, it has a pedagogic vocation. Our gardeners need to be activists because they have a relationship with nature and the land that is clearly much stronger than for some senior manager sitting in an office. They work outside all year round, suffering heatwaves and cold spells. They are the first to witness climate change unfold, and perhaps the primary agents of change. MUGO is an independent family firm because we believe that nature is a shared asset, one that should not be subjected to the financialisation of our economy.

What should business schools be doing to make their students more aware of the environmental stakes?

BLC: Get them to do some work outdoors. I was a scout in France, an experience that from a very young age gave me a close relationship with the natural world. I love the expression “mother nature” because when you’re outside, alone surrounded by the natural world, it makes you aware that you’re just a tiny speck of life in the middle of something much greater.

GLC: It is obvious that new students need to be taught about climate change. Business schools must start playing a role. First of all, we need to understand the major changes we face, the decarbonisation of the economy, the loss of biodiversity, and then develop greater awareness of the living world. This could involve a training course, working outdoors, military service, the scouts, etc. or even internships involving manual work, for example in engineering schools, or in associations, NGOs or companies like ours that work with living things. It could also involve defending bans on tuna fishing or going to pick up plastic waste on the Basque coast. It is essential for everyone to be linked by the same realisation, the same real-life experience. You might say cities have literally cut us off from our roots.

Would you also say that we are lacking an explanation of the long-term financial advantages of environmental action?

BLC: Yes, but it’s very theoretical. Business schools above all need to teach people to strike a balance. Balance in the natural world is quite close to balance in the life of an individual: there is a cycle of seasons, and the cycle of day and night. If you teach people how to strike a life balance, you bring them a little closer to nature.

GLC: That’s it, business schools need to play a role in transforming the economy and the environmental transition – which is a goldmine for job creation – by explaining the contribution that the natural world can make to cities. MUGO is a member of the Convention des Entreprises pour le Climat, a group of 150 business leaders from France who have come together to think about our economic model and the way we live alongside one another, and above all about a way for companies to have as little impact as possible on mother nature. Business schools cannot only have an academic approach, they must tackle these central issues because they are training the senior managers who will be founding or running the companies, NGOs or associations of the future. Business can undergo a transformation or disappear in the face of the changes unfolding. It is not an end in itself, it is also and above all a community of people working towards a shared objective.

BLC: The people who will shape the future are not those who have simply learned, but those who, through their encounter with the living world, have experienced something so powerful that they go on to change things. The future will be driven by those who have real experiences rather than those with nothing more than a discourse. And I say that as a business leader myself!

More info about MUGO