A Gardener in France

I was Googling around a few days ago, trying to find the origin of my latest pride-and-joy, Hibiscus syriacus China Chiffon.

I say latest: we have owned the plant for several months now and gave it a place of honour outside one of the living room windows, next to a favourite sculpture and water feature. It has recently started to flower, so now we can see what we have bought.

Hibiscus China Chiffon flowering with Verbascum Helen Johnson

The photo shows the flower of the Chiffon series quite well, a simple flower with the addition of small petals in the centre.

From what I can gather, at least two of the series were bred in Cambridgeshire (UK) by a private gardener, with the rights to distribute sold to Notcutts, famous for Hibiscus but no longer trading, and to Briant in France.

I hate common names for plants and I have seen several listings describing Hibiscus as a Rose of Sharon, which for the British is Hypericum, especially the groundcovering H. calycinum. Life would be so much easier if we all stuck to botanical Latin!

Wandering around via Google I also noted a range of different flower types listed as China Chiffon, varying from small inner petals like ours, to full double flowers. Sometimes these effects vary depending on the weather; sometimes varieties are mixed up at the nursery. If anyone has a view on my plant, please feel free to share.

Here in central France Hibiscus grow very well and they are used as hedges in many local gardens. Often English clients are surprised when I tell them I have planted Hibiscus for them: they confuse it with  Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, which they may have grown as a houseplant. On a recent trip to visit a client in the Almeria region of the south of Spain, they were growing a range of these in the garden.

An apricot-coloured Hibiscus rosa-sinensis growning outside in Spain

These tropical plants are evergreen provided the temperatures remain above 10 degrees C and are used both as hedging and specimen shrubs.

H. syriacus is deciduous and hardy. There are many varieties to choose from, offering flowers in white, blue, pink and red, with several double and bicolour types.  The RHS Plantfinder list 46 varieties, although it may be some are not available and a few others are listed here in France.

More gardening news from Chateau Elliott: on a trip to the DIY shop today I dropped in to Gamme Vert to see what they had to offer. A nice garden centre, I thought and they were discounting herbacious plants by 70%. Three paeonies were snapped up and are now planted in the garden. More on these no doubt, when they flower.

There is only so much fun and lad can handle and this week has certainly been eventful, if rather unproductive.

The French have been having a long weekend, running through Saturday and Sunday, bridging (as they say) Monday and into the public holiday on Tuesday. As a result the town is full of people down from Paris: overdressed townies taking the country air and bringing their bored kids with them. Suddenly no-one says “Hello” any more when they meet you in the street, the locals being outnumbered by this influx of people with no manners.

Oh yes, fun: everyone is entertaining in the garden and we have been for several four or five hour lunches with friends.
On Bastille Day we had lunch for most of the day and as darkness fell joined up with more friends for fireworks and dancing on the beach.

None of this has helped my productivity but I did get a little planting done, moved log cabin components from the front to the back of the house and tackled a couple of DIY jobs. We also completed the registration of our gite and B&B with the governmental agency Gite de France in the hope of attracting more bookings.

On Wednesday the huge Tour de France carnival passed through the area, finishing a stage at Issodan and starting one in Vatan, both towns just around the corner from us.

Tour de France start of stage at Vatan

The front of the pack: Tours de France 2009 - Vatan