Winter gardening down-time

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”~Marcus Cicero, 106-43 BC, Roman statesman and philosopher.

Winter can be hard on the gardener. We are longing to be outside but are generally stuck indoors while all around us blizzards rage. This is not strictly true in my more gentle part of the world, but I feel you those of you in less equitable climes. While Cicero may have left out a few essentials with which my adopted home is well blessed (art, music, wine, food, anyone?), garden books make it much easier to survive the dreary weather.

Pyracantha with berries in Chabris

My own collection runs into scores and ranges from antique, leather bound works by eighteenth century radical agriculturist William Cobbett and the plant hunter George Forest, to those great little “Expert” books by DG Hessayan. My first copy of Be Your Own Rose Expert set me back Two shillings and six pence and was bought to assist customers on my parent’s nursery in Cornwall. I have several others in the series, one or two in multiple additions as they were updated to reflect new varieties, new techniques and gardening fashions.

We moved to the Loire Valley from Hertfordshire 16 months ago and have been slowly organising our home, social and business life ever since. There are still unpacked boxes in the loft and buildings awaiting renovation and most of my books are stored out there somewhere.

We did come across a few in the early days and the RHS Encyclopaedia was one of the first to be unpacked. A boxed set of two volumes, this is the third edition that I have owned and is completely indispensible to me. It is not perfect -  in a world where new varieties are released every year it is impossible for a book like this to be completely comprehensive and up to date – but it is about as good as such an ambitious work could be.

It describes over 15,500 garden plants, many with photographs, and lists them in the only sensible way: alphabetically, by Latin name. The large format makes it a pleasure to leaf through in idle moments and for those times when you need to identify an unknown plant, a pleasant hour skimming through the pictures normally results in a find. If you know what you are looking for and just want to check cultivation notes, you can go straight to the plant concerned. Now that my growing is slightly more exotic I welcome one aspect that I used to find irritating: the number of plants in the encyclopaedia which I was not able to grow in southern England.

Before the RHS encyclopaedia was published, my favourite of this type was by the Readers Digest and every so often I still refer to my battered copy of The Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers dating from the ‘70’s. At half the price but with only a fraction of the plants, it remains a great reference book with a much more practical edge than the RHS encyclopaedia.

Mahonia brings a little winter cheer to the streets of Angers

Of course if you want practical, the Royal Horticultural Society does practical, and a series of publications approaching plants and gardening at different levels are available. I have various books under the RHS banner on plant pests and diseases, fruit cultivation, herbs, vegetables and many specialist subjects. They are all written by experts in their field, whose authority is beyond question.

A great deal of our time is these days spent teaching gardening, garden design and a range of horticultural subjects, mostly by distance learning. Our Chinese clients think this is an admirable thing to do: to pass on ones knowledge to those coming up behind. We have a surge of bookings for courses during the winter, with gardening amateurs and professionals using their down-time to improve their understanding of the subject. For much the same reason we always have plenty of garden design appointments at this time of the year.

I find teaching is both pleasurable and instructional: you learn a great deal, with personal prejudices challenged and memory stretched by the probing questions and demands of students. The internet gives them such extensive access to information that your task is to explain errors in judgement and interpretation rather than just to dish out facts to be accepted without question. Our courses now include some serious vocational studies like the RHS Diploma in Horticulture however, and facts are facts. These sometimes need to be checked, so I’m glad I still have access to all my old horticultural books from back in the days when I was a student at Pershore College.

Ilex meserveae Blue Angel

Now that we live in France it is fascinating to compare and contrast French gardening books and magazines. I subscribe to ‘Jardins de France’, the excellent revue of the SNHF, the French equivalent of the RHS, while still receiving The Garden from the Royal Horticulture Society in England. I also have a few French gardening books, although many of the best over here are translated from English. Le Guide Clause-Vilmorin du Jardin is the latest version of an encyclopaedia I have been using for many years, since working for the seed company Clause near Paris. It tries to be comprehensive and has sold over 5 million copies, but the use of common names, French common names, drives me crazy!

Before I lose the tenuous grasp I still have on the English language, I am determined to write my second book. “Was there a first”?  I hear you ask, as well you might for all the impact it made in the book shops at the time. At one stage I was considered an expert on bedding plants and this was the subject of my little book. These days I have CAD training to offer to garden designers and while we do quite well from residential courses it is suggested there is a need for a training manual on the subject. The outline is done and the plan is to complete the book this winter. It may have been last winters’ plan as well!

Another profitable way to pass time at this time of the year is with the latest editions of the seed catalogues. We are still sent these automatically by many of our favourite suppliers while others need to be hunted down and paid for each year. New varieties are the stuff of gardening and seed companies understand this. Old varieties are rebranded and presented as something new while, it is true, some genuine novelties appear most years. Planning your new floral displays and the vegetables you are going to eat this summer is one of life’s great pleasures and accompanied by mulled wine around a roaring log fire……or was that the latest Disney Christmas film?

Gardening is full of romantic images like this and it is hard to deny that it seems to fill some great need in the human psyche. Whether you consider gardening to be “the new rock ‘n’ roll”  or a connection with “the good life” with which so many of us have lost contact, the pursuit of gardening is something that links us to each other and with nature in one single, shared activity. If this activity is slowed or even brought to a halt by inclement weather and the passing of the growing season, we can still dream, surely?

Technorati code: 7VUDU9YSMZY9

 

Gardening in France…..promise

The Cinema - theme of Villetrois Flower Festival 2009

I have had a polite request; actually it was verging on the offensive, but as it was from a loyal reader I will try not to be offended. The printable bits said something like: “Please let’s have a blog about gardening in France rather than the shameless plugging of your many a various businesses, fine though they may be” (I liked that last bit)

So, never let it be said I ignore my adoring public: there will be no mention of Les Sequoias B&B in this one, the new courses on offer at the Garden Design Academy will not be referred to and the fact that Loire Valley Properties now has a couple of chateaux on its books will be neatly side-stepped.

Chateau de Villentrois

 Villentrois Flower Show. Set in the old mushroom caves cut into the tufa of the river valley, this little show is celebrating its 21^st year which, for a village of some 600 souls, is not bad going.

Cave de la Poterie, site of the annual flower show.

It ran this year over three days and is free of charge. We chose to go on Saturday lunchtime when all the stand-holders were eating in a side cavern, so the passages were empty.

The theme this year was The Cinema and local schools, parks, landscapers and florists had created a series of displays based on this, occupying spaces cut in the rock which had once contained the mushroom beds of the company Malet. It was cold down there!

The film theme game was played by everyone: a stand full of fruit and vegetables had posters of films with appropriate names: Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes, Inspector Poirreau (=Leek, get it?) and many more. A lot of the French film references went over my head, but it was all good fun. This is what life in France is all about.

 

Garden Design Academy

My recent lecture to a group of visiting UK garden enthusiasts, made me think about my experiences of gardening and garden design in France.  I was also keen to show them slides from the International Garden Festival at Chaumont, which I have been going to for years.

Chaumont is challenging for the average garden enthusiast, but a “must see” event for professionals, being a show committed to the outer reaches of contemporary garden design. Abstract themes have been set each year since 1992 to encourage designers to create the unexpected, to think “outside the box”. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else, although imitators come and go. Every year a number of visitors stay at our B & B or gîte to witness this amazing gardening event.

The list of themes is interesting, but bear in mind that when written in French many of them have dual or obscure meanings in a deliberate attempt by the organisers to illicit a range of responses from garden creators. I’ve talked about this show before, I know, but not provided this list:

¨  1992 Pleasure

¨  1993 Imagination during the economic crisis

¨  1994 Acclimatisation

¨  1995 Unexpected gardens

¨  1996 Too much technique, not enough poetry?

¨  1997 Water, water, everywhere

¨  1998 Ricochets

¨  1999 Only vegetables

¨  2000 Freedom

¨  2001 Carpet bedding etc

¨  2002 The Erotic Garden

¨  2003 Weeds

¨  2004 Chaos: order and disorder

¨  2005 Gardens have memories

¨  2006 Play in the garden

¨  2007 Mobiles: gardens for a world on the move

¨  2008 Gardens to share

¨  2009 Colour

This year’s event was surprising in many ways, with many gardens seeming to lack colour rather than celebrate it. There was much discussion on the use of black (is it a colour?)  and on the nature of gardens (what is a garden?) but fear not gentle reader, there were also plenty of plants to admire. The gardens are left in place to develop and grow from March to October and maintained by students of the horticultural college on the site.

I often take students attending Academy residential courses to Chaumont as a stimulus to debate. Some of the more animated discussions have gone on well into the night, lubricated by more than a little Touraine wine; such is the provocative nature of the festival. Garden designers on our CAD training events have been very enthusiastic in general, but even amateurs with us for the ‘Design your own Garden’ workshops have enjoyed it.

Our most popular course has proved to be the RHS Certificate in Horticulture (level 2), offered by distance learning with course notes on CD and support by post and email. Garden Design and Garden History are also attracting students, mostly British but also a few Americans. A few students live in France as we do, but most do not. We work closely with a distance learning college in Australia which gives us access to a very wide range of professionally written courses.

While we now spend a great deal of my working day teaching the science, art and craft that is horticulture, gardening and design, it keeps our feet on the ground to see the country folk around us working with nature and the seasons.

Many of our neighbours have vast gardens while others work in the fields of the Berry or the vineyards of the Touraine. Gardening tasks are often (I was going to say, religiously) undertaken on Saint’s Days and planting on St. Catherine’s Day (25^th November ) is a guarantee of success:  “a la Sainte Catherine, tout bois prend racine” – “on St. Catherine’s day, the trees take root”. We will plant a Magnolia grandiflora this year and have no doubt it will thrive, as did last year’s Cherry trees.

I like to talk to the locals about their customs and traditions and learn much about living in this rural community from them. We find we have adapted to the pace of life and like everyone, keep our eyes peeled for wild food such as mushrooms and walnuts while walking the dog through the countryside each day.

I also like to give something back and have helped identify plants, advised on pests and diseases and suggested horticultural techniques they may not be aware of locally. They don’t always accept my advice and no amount of self-promotion seems to impress them, but I have had some successes. I was recently discussing Cloque du Pécher (Peach Leaf Curl) because I needed a photograph of the disease for one of our RHS Certificate students. Would she be spraying for it? I asked the garden owner. Yes, I was told, but not until after the full moon! I should have known really: the region was once notorious for witch craft.

Teaching the science of horticulture is relatively straightforward: the facts are all in the course notes and students’ answers to test questions are either right or wrong. In addition to the RHS Certificate we also offer an Advanced Certificate and the RHS Diploma: a vocational qualification of some seriousness. Teaching garden design is different. The subject is a wide-ranging mixture of art, craft and science and opinions on garden aesthetics are subjects for debate rather than learning by rote.

Students are expected to work through the Certificate in Garden Design in around 700 hours but in practice you never stop learning with a subject like this. It involves everything from soil chemistry to playground health and safety, in addition to plant knowledge and drawing skills. The course has modules in garden history, surveying, drainage and rockwork. Even after designing more than 1000 gardens I would never claim to know it all and in fact one of the joys of teaching is learning from your students. It’s stimulating, challenging and still great fun after all these years.

Some of our students have asked me to get involved with projects they are working on. A recent design contract in Cornwall came to us from a student.

A few of our students clients have written to us to ask for references and many are amazed that training and qualifications are available in subjects like garden design and horticulture. I come across gardeners and garden designers in the UK and France with little interest, knowledge or experience charging as much as highly qualified professionals. I am proud to now be in a position to pass on what I know to those who wish to do better in the industry I have worked in all my life.

 

Camellia talk

At the end of a day visiting Courson, laden down with goodies, tired but happy, it was time to sing for my supper. I was asked to speak to the ICS group in the evening and had prepared a talk with slides to illustrate my subject: gardening in France, with particular reference to the International Festival of Gardening at Chaumont.

It’s been I while since I have lectured in this way but everyone was encouraging and I muddled through as best I could. I think it went OK, at least they didn’t refuse to give me the gift they had brought me: an unusual Camellia species – Cam. grijsii. I am still skipping about with excitement over the gift.

The following text and photograph was found here: http://sazanka.org

Camellia grijsii

Camellia grijsii (长瓣短柱茶 in Chinese) Hance (1879) is a wild species of section Paracamellia. It is related to C. sasanqua, C. oleifera and C. kissii. It was collected in 1861 in Fujian by C.F.M. de Grijs. It is distributed in China (Fujian, Hubei, Sichuan, Guangxi) and used for a high-quality oil production.

Camellia grijsii has great hybridizing potential. Two plants in my garden have small leaves with impressed veins and very columnar shape. I believe there are also varieties with larger leaves, but I am specifically interested in small-leaved cultivars.

Another great feature of C. grijsii is its cluster-flowering habit. However in my garden C. grijsii flowers from January to March, so it will be a challenge to cross it with Fall-flowering sasanquas. Probably I will have to store some pollen from sasanquas in refrigerator for a couple of months.

The plant itself was grown by Trehane Nurseries and Penny Trehane (yes, the Penny Trehane) was part of the group. Like so many famous and talented nursery-folk I have met over the years, she is a charming champion of her subject, an expert in Blueberries as well as Camellias.

My new Camellia will sit well with the sasanquas I bought at the show.

 

ICS visits Courson 2009

As noted in my previous post, last weekend I was the guest of the International Camellia Society and the RHS Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia group, as nice a bunch of people as you could hope to meet in a garden in France.

Friday we visited Les Journée des Plantes at Domaine de Courson, south of Paris. This is my favourite plant fairs and we try to go every year – so much easier now that we live in France, only two hours away by motorway.

Courson - the chateau from across the lake

The ICS had its own stand and I took the opportunity to meet them and buy a Camellia, a variegated sasanqua variety called Okina-Goroma, with pink flowers during the winter. I hope to keep this in a pot in the unheated conservatory which covers the north side of our house, to enjoy the flower and scent as you come to the front door.

As usual the range and quality of plants was astonishing and although I bought several, there were many wonderful plants I wanted which had to be left. Last year I regretted not buying a Skimmia japonica Magic Marlot and I made up for it at the stand of Pépinière Tous au Jardin, from whom I also bought a smashing Hydrangea paniculata called Great Star.

Hydrangea paniculata Great Star

The nursery had many fine Hydrangeas and I was pleased to see they won an award for H. involucrata Mihara Kokomoe Tama, together with the Press Award for the best display.

Also on the stand was Mahonia nitens Cabaret, a new variety which is already on my “must have” list for next year.

Mahonia nitens Cabaret

It cannot be said that plants are cheap in France, and with my pocket money disappearing fast I had to be quite selective. Guillot supplied me with a couple of Roses, including one from their Generosa range, similar to David Austens modern shrub roses.

We have been meaning to visit the Cayeux iris fields for years but have yet to make it: next June I hope. In the mean time, I have satisfied my desire for their plants by buying three, together with a Hemerocallis called Burning Daylight. From Darmartis I bought our second Lagerstromia, this one a dark pink, purple almost, called Dynamite. They also had variegated Euphorbia Tasmanian Tiger and this was added to the collection in the plant creche.

I had replaced a couple of plants left in the UK: Salvia uliginosa and Phlomis purpurea, bought a couple of grasses and a very pretty strawberry coloured Hydrangea hortensis Mirai before I relaesed I couldn’t afford to eat for the rest of the trip and called a halt to it. I made do with looking at everything the other members of the group had bought, jealously eying the Magnolias in particular.

This show can bring out the worst in you if you are not careful!

 

Its Courson time again!

I look forward to Courson, the twice-yearly plant fair held at the Domaine de Courson, Essone, in the countryside south of Paris.

If you are passionate about plants the event is blissful, with nurseries from around Europe showing their wares in the park of the chateau. It has a relaxed country fair feel but the staggering range of  high quality and rare plants available to purchase always leaves me with a feeling of shock from overexposure to so many bank account-draining temptations.

This year there is an added thrill for me having been asked to talk to the International Camellia Society (and the RHS Rhodendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group) at their hotel after visiting the show on the Friday. I am busily preparing slides for them, concentrating on my other favourite French gardening event, annual the International Festival at Chaumont.

On Saturday 17^th they are off on a trip to a couple of unique gardens, the Arboretun Vilmorin and the Jardin Albert Kahn and I am delighted to have been invited. In fact, wild horses failed in their attempt to drag me away!

Les Jounees des Plantes de Courson is on 16^th – 18^th of October. You really ought to go.

www.domaine-de-courson.fr

 

Garden designers chat

One of the joys of teaching horticulture is the conversations you have with fellow garden designers, growers and landscapers. As part of a residential course on CAD held at our home in France recently, we visited The International Garden Festival at Chaumont where this year’s theme was “colour”.

The artists and designers seemed puzzled by the theme and had difficulty in just letting themselves go. Black was much in evidence. Black isn’t a primary, secondary, or tertiary colour. In fact, black isn’t on the artist’s colour wheel and usually isn’t considered a colour at all. Instead, black appears when you bring ANY colour to its darkest value.

Chaumont 2009 Garden in black

Artists, of course, do use black extensively, there exists a society for black plants and Karen Platt’s nursery near Sheffield, England, specialises in them.

This garden was constructed entirely in black and as we sat outside with our black standard poodle I told anyone who commented that she was the designer!

Europe’s entire production of Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ seemed to have been requisitioned for the show while for the red gardens there was no shortage of  Imperata cylindrica Red Barron – Japanese Blood Grass.

Chaumont 2009 Garden with Imperata Red Baron set against Silver Birch logs

On the whole we found the use of colour at the show unadventurous and, at the time, disappointing. My thought is in a country where every roundabout and verge is a mass of colourful plants, the designers felt they had to be clever and come up with something different. In many cases, they failed to impress: pity.

But this is a show that rewards a little thought and looking through the photographs I took during the Garden Design Academy visit has been easily as exciting as seeing them in real life.
Back in Chabris, after a meal and a few glasses of white Touraine, we continued to chat about the use of colour. People have preferences but I have had several clients who have hated yellow, enough to tell me off severely when I allowed a few yellow flowered plants to stray into a planting scheme.

 

My own view is that it is actually hard to go wrong with colour in the garden: Nature didn’t employ a designer to create the wonderful scenes I see all around me (skipping around any religious view s you may have on the subject). But it is also possible to create some fascinating effects at any one time and throughout the seasons with careful design.
Just to prove it is possible I have started to establish a yellow garden, or rather, an area where many of the plants I grow have yellow foliage or flowers. I am particularly pleased that it seems possible to grow several variegated plants in close proximity: yet another general rule successfully broken!

Bee on Caryopteris Summer Sorbet

Residential courses are held at irregular intervals throughout the year at the Garden Design Academy, Chabris, France. Details on: http://www.gardendesignacademy.com

Chaumont 2009 Garden in Red

 

Journees des Plantes de Courson – the autumn show.

A press pack has just arrived in our post box, detailing the events and themes for this autumn’s Journees des Plantes at Courson, south of Paris.

 
Two plant shows are held at the Chateau de Courson each year, prestigious events drawing amateur and professional gardeners and horticulturists from all over Europe, both to visit and to exhibit.

 
It  is a highlihght of our gardening year and this year we have been invited to speak to the members of the International Camellia Society and the RHS Camellia, Magnolia and Rhodoendron Group on the Friday evening. Our theme is to be gardening and garden design in France, looking in particular at the annual GardenFestival at Chaumont.

 
Each year we limit ourselves on the amount of plants we can buy at Courson and every year I regret not buying so many beautiful things. In the days when we were building £100,000 gardens for a living a few plants here or there hardly registered on our budget. These days we have to watch our pennies a little more carefully!

Largetroemia indica

Last year we bought our first Lagerstroemia indica, from the master of the genus, Demartis of Bergerac. We chose the variety Yang Tse, a family reminder that my Grandmother and Grandfather lived alongside the river of the same name, when he was architect to Shanghai Municipal Council prior to and during the invation of China by Japan.

This plant suffered during its first winter but is now a healthy bush, covered with flower buds which are just starting to open.

 

A Mimosa bought at the same time did not survive the cold; an appeal for a replacement from the nursery resulted in a letter telling me off for not looking after it! Caveat emptor!

 

Signs of Spring and Spring Gardening Shows.

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.

 

First Day of Spring?

Just a touch of frost this morning, but what a gorgeous day followed. After working on a clients plan for a few hours I needed little excuse to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

Walking the dog by the river, watching the swans feeding and socialising, we eventually reached the old mill, where Snowdrops – Perce-Neige -  Galanthus nivalis -   were flowering in huge drifts on a shady lawn.

Poodle posing in the Snow drops - the old mill at Chabris

A liitle more work done on the computor and we were out again, our excuse this time the need to do some planting in the little garden we have set aside for our ‘gite’ guests. We dug the soil (dreadful stuff dumped there by builders) and planted a little composition in the sunniest corner: Cupressus Goldcrest at the back, Weigela florida nana variegata to one side, an un-named yellow Cytisus to the other and a clump of purple Heuchera in the middle.

All the plants came from an English nursery; we find them to be cheaper and better than over here in France. We are also disappointed to discover that when we do bite the bullet and buy French plants they will not replace any losses you might have in the way that we have come to expect in the UK. We recently informed a French nursery by email that we had lost one of their plants over the winter. His reply was rapid and unequivical: it was not his problem.

We were nursery hunting last week, when we visited a huge trade show in Angers, Salon du Vegetal. There were nurseries, equipment suppliers and other horticultural specialists exhibiting from all over Europe, but very few flying the British flag. This is a pity, given the oportunities over here, especially with the pound so low against the Euro. The company you see everywhere is David Austin Roses and again they were on hand with French speaking sales staff and apparently doing good business.