A Gardener in France

For the last six months we have been living in our rental gite, which we created a couple of years ago from a derelict garage, while the main house is slowly, painfully slowly, renovated. 

Its lovely, but after all this time we would like to stop living next to a building site and get our lives back. To cheer the place up we have been placing  colourful flowering plants near the door, including flowering shrubs in a terracotta pot.

It is rather nice to see a plant close-up several times a day: you learn to appreciate its sublteties and discover aspects of it you may not have noticed before. I have tried to select scented plants where possible and my seasonal selection started with Hamamelis Arnold Promise, an American variety of Witch Hazel I had not grown before. This has now been planted in the garden, as has the plant that replaced it: Daphne mezereum.

The shrub that is currently greeting us as we return to the gite is Osmanthus burkwoodii, another strongly scented plant, this time with white flowers and evergreen foliage.

Our pot full of Osmanthus by the door

The season is moving on a pace, with Magnolias and the first of the fruit trees in flower: Peaches, Pears and Cherries.

Oh, and I heard the first Cuckoo today!

Purple-leaved Plum floweiring in a Chabris garden

20th March was officially the start of spring but the week before was wonderful in our part of the world. Every day while walking the dog you could see the progress of the season: great excitement at seeing the first Daffodil in flower, the next day a dozen of them were out and only a day later and they were everywhere

Forsythia flowering in a Chabris garden

The same excitement as Nature gradually wakes up and buds and flowers of other plants open. In the countryside we have Violets, Cowslips, and Renunculus while in gardens the ornamental Plum trees are flowering alongside Chaenomeles (flowering Quince), Camellia, Forsythia and of course those Daffodils.

Daffodils herald the spring in Chabris

At home I have been frantically preparing and planting a border running along the boundary from the kitchen, past the Sequoias, to the end of the garden. We have a good selection of plants which I brought over from the UK, together with a few bought in France or donated by friends. I am keen to plant species which are not normally seen in these parts and if they are new to me as well, that is a bonus.

The hurry is caused by the advancing season; plants will be so much happier in the soil than sitting around in my makeshift nursery in the front garden. I have had to hand dig and create a new bed from a patch of ground which has been neglected for decades so progress has been slow but the results very satisfying.

The kitchen end now has a few herbs: Sage (with an attractive tricolor leaf), Chives found as seedlings in a pot brought from our garden in England, Bay, which is everywhere here, Rosemary bought at the local supermarket and Vervain, another UK seedling . We will need more, but it’s a start.

Beyond that I am planting in my favourite garden colour range: white, blue and pink, assisted by next doors white Lilac (about to flower) and a Philadelphus that was one of the few plants to survive the garden clearance.

We saw our first Cowslips today, on a grassy bank by the River Cher during a dog walk this afternoon; earlier in the week our first Camellia flower in the front garden of a house in the town.

I can’t wait for Spring to arrive and most years sow things too early or plant them out when it would be wiser to keep them under cover. It will be interesting to see how our first spring in France works out. Certainly the locals have been busy in their vegetable plots and assure us we would be unlucky to see a frost now.

The garden show season will soon be with us and I have already been invited to several. Courson has its Camellia Weekend 14th and 15th March and its famous Journees des Plantes from 15th – 17th May. We expect to be so busy in May that for the first time in ages we will not be going to Chelsea this year; I’m sure they’ll manage witout us.

We are planning to exhibit for the first time in France this year, showing garden design at the May Bank Holiday plant fair at La Ferte Saint Aubin in the heart of the Sologne. This will be a good test of my ability (or otherwise) to sell our services in French, at a medium sized event with a good reputation amongst plant enthusiasts.

It took us a little while to realise that if we wanted mail delivered we are obliged to install a regulation-type post box out on the street. It’s in shiney green metal and comes with a lock that the postman has a master key to.

Heaven only knows what mail was lost, rushing backwards and forwards between departments of the Post Office dealing with post from our (closed) UK office, our house in Bedfordshire and here in France, before we finally realised why no-one was talking to us.

Now that that’s sorted we recieve, along with junk mail in two languages, both French and English gardening, garden design and horticulture magazines, brochures and catalogues; its a job to keep up with it all.  I’m also skimming through several months-worth of magazines I discovered on the hallway floor when I nipped back to the UK recently!

For me and my UK clients its important that I keep up to date with what is going on over there while here I have a whole new industry to learn about and a new vocabulary to come to terms with.

Daphne odora Marianni

There are also new plants to admire, like this Daphne odora variety I spotted at a show recently.