Easter weekend: the first Cuckoo and the second plant fair.

Flowering Quince in a spring garden

Easter was not warm; in fact it has been the coldest March in the north of France since records began. Sheltered from all directions here in the centre of France, even we have had cool nights with temperatures down to zero or less, and rising above 10°C only with difficulty. Despite gorgeous-looking sunny days, it seems more like winter than spring, although we hear our first Cuckoo of the year when we were walking the dog in the woods this morning.

Our new lawn is finally seeded however and, now that we have been to our second plant fair of the year, there is plenty of planting to be done. Today I concentrated on a sunny piece of border between the new lawn and the gravel terrace, at the edge of the White Garden. A Thyme collected in Spain now graces the junction between gravel and grass, swiftly followed by Cistus ladanifer bought at the Chateau de la Bourdaisiere plant fair from a couple of young nurserymen based in Cahors. We like their knowledge, enthusiasm and plant range. The Gum Cistus carries white flowers with crimson marks at the base of the petals and should look quite at home next to existing Santolina. We bought some bare-root Phlox yesterday including a white variety, the next plant in this new grouping and three Allium White Empress bulbs are now planted amongst the Santolina to give a little extra height. Finally for today, I lifted two, out of our three, white Hemerocallis (Daylilies), spreading them out to occupy part of the new space created by redefining the lawn. A very happy hour and a half was spent doing this and weeding the areas immediately around the new plants, but there is still plant of work to do in the White Garden.

Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’ attracting early Bumble Bees

Beyond this section we have created an oriental garden which has also benefited from the new lines of the lawn, with plenty of additional planting opportunities created. A Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’, smothered with white flowers, has already been planted and this is glowing in the spring sunshine. I have planted it to one side and in front of a large granite Japanese lantern. To the other side and further back, I have placed, but not yet planted, a Pieris with red flowers, labelled as Mountain Fire, a variety which features white flowers! I believe it is actually Valley Valentine. I am continually having arguments with French nurserymen about their labelling: no labels, poor labeling or incorrect labels are all too common here. Anyway, the plant looks good, with bamboo to one side, Japanese orchids and dwarf Rhododendron yakushimanum in front. It is also very close to a young plant of Magnolia Black Tulip which, with luck, will flower around the same time.

Pieris Valley Valentine, if I’m not mistaken

I have been hunting for two of the plants we bought yesterday for some time, although neither is particularly rare in English garden centres. Clematis macropetala is just coming into flower now: four lance-shaped petals an inch or two long and many smaller, blue or cream petal-like stamens in the centre, creating delightful semi-double bells. We haven’t decided where to plant it but we are so pleased to have it. Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis is a dwarf evergreen shrub with superbly scented winter flowers. I’ll plant it in the bed next to the front door, to amaze our visitors. This has been on my wants list for ages so I am delighted to have found such a large, healthy specimen.

Much as I’d like to spend all day in the garden, I also have to prepare the classroom for the first of the years students, who arrives next week. We have been asked to put together a tailor-made, two week course for the Director of the Royal Gardens of Oman, who would like to hone his skills in garden design and computer-aided design (CAD). I always look forward to welcoming fellow professionals on our courses, adapting the content around their existing skills and the training required. There is always a great deal of preparation to be done and in this case a number of Loire Valley garden visits will punctuate the course, giving additional insights into European gardens in all their many styles.

The first garden show of the year and other excitements

As spring takes hold of central France the season is confirmed by a flurry of garden and plant shows, not to mention all the local spring fairs and Easter events coming up at the end of the week. Of course I have chosen now, just when life is getting busy, to go down with a flu-like bug of some sort, which has put me to bed for one whole day and ruined my sense of humour for more than a week.

A carpet of Daffodils at La Source, Orleans.

There is no time to be ill so I have done my best to ignore it and last Friday attended a seminar with three dozen other gardeners and chateau owners at La Source, the marvellous public garden in the university district of Orleans. The subject of the day was colour theory and how it relates to the design of herbaceous and bedding plant displays. A couple of good speakers, one from parks and education and the other a plant producer, simplified a subject which is not always straightforward to explain and left the delegates eager to get to work producing new schemes for their respective towns and gardens. At La Source itself the Cherries were just starting to flower and there were huge areas of dwarf daffodils to admire.

A corner of the Cheverny plant fair

After another half day in bed to recover from my outing, we went to the chateau at Cheverny on Sunday for the first of the year’s plant fairs. The show is an annual charity event and well supported by both the public and the trade. As usual we bought a few plants, but not as many as I expected to. The tree surgeon we employed to care for our ancient Sequoias was on site demonstrating his skill with a chain saw, producing sculptures from huge pieces of wood, the waste from his previous weeks work maintaining trees in the park of the chateau.

Chain saw art

Next weekend is Easter, with events all over the region. We have been invited to more vineyard open days than we can possibly take in and the plant fair at chateau de la Bourdaisiere. Then there is the unmissable annual Poulain Donkey Fair and a host of other events all conspiring to keep me from working in the garden, where there is so much to do!

Spring? Surely…..?

Crocus, fresh up today.
These are cheering up an area of Iris germanica which are barely showing a sign of life.

It’s a gorgeous sunny day here in the Loire Valley, with temperatures up to 19°C at the (south facing) back of the house and 10°C in the shade at the front, after a frosty start.

Hundreds of Canada Geese are flying up the river to find an attractive feeding spot for the evening, huge, noisy V-formations passing overhead every half hour or so. Buds are swelling and the first few spring-flowering plants are making an appearance – we have Crocus flowers to admire today, adding their weight to the Witch Hazel, the Hellebores and other brave souls which have heralded this current spring awakening.

Snowdrops are still doing well, as here, under the Japanese Maple

This morning I was chatting to the local Pear expert, out in the orchard attending to the pruning of his collection, the largest in Europe in spite of reducing the numbers last year; tomorrow I am taking a group of American tourists to see the vineyards, where the pruning is mostly finished but the tying-in has still to be done. We will be visiting (and tasting) a number of Loire Valley appellations in our day trip: Touraine Mesland, where we have an appointment with a bio-dynamic grower, my favourite Vouvray producer, the wine co-op at Montlouis-sur-Loire, the new appellation of Touraine-Chenonceau and the Touraine itself. It should be a very entertaining series of visits.

An interesting colour break on our Daphne odora. I will try to put some roots on it later and see if we can produce a new variety.

Here in the garden I am about to sow the new lawn having cultivated the soil again on Saturday (I have the blisters to prove it!). There is so much to do to prepare the garden for the new season and as always there is a hold up in the propagation of bedding and vegetables as seedlings take their time to grow to a size where I am happy to remove them from the propagator. I’m trying not to panic. We have added to the complications this year by advertising our apartment to the holiday-seeking world, and as guests expect access to the swimming pool all the corners where I usually throw the junk have to be urgently tidied. There is a door to put on the garden shed, a gate to erect to secure the pool and huge amounts of useful materials to move to new homes (tell me where!) so that in a few years they can be moved again, dumped or burned.

France’s great garden trade fair – Salon du Vegetal

Yesterday we drove to Angers for the Salon du Végétal, the massive annual exhibition for the garden industry. Unlike many similar trade shows in the UK, plants are particularly strongly represented by a large proportion of the 600 exhibitors. Around a quarter of them where from outside France – 13 countries in all – but sadly UK nurserymen were very thin on the ground: I spotted just three – David Austin Roses, who had French staff on the stand and were clearly open for business, Fairweathers Nursery (for liners and Agapanthus) and Whetman Pinks, who are also very active in France. It’s a pity because France is a very large market for garden products and their retail prices are higher than in the UK. On the other hand there were 50 Spanish exhibitors, 34 came from Belgium, with Italy and Holland each sending around 30.

A slipper orchid from the Garden Orchids range: Cypripedium regina

Around 15,000 trade buyers from 13 countries attend the three day event but again, Brits were remarkably absent ( I was told by the staff on one stand that they had chatted to Paul Rochford but disappointingly we did not meet up ). Still, I enjoyed myself looking at new plants on the market and making contact with a number of useful potential suppliers of plants and landscape materials. The highlight of my plant discoveries was found on the stand of Anthura, a Dutch company specialising in Phalaenopsis orchids, Anthuriums and hardy Cypripedium orchids. I had spotted Garden Orchids on their stand last year, but now they have really got their act together with superb packaging, I am sure they will be a best seller Europe-wide. Lady Slipper Orchid – Cypripedium calceolus – is one of Britain’s rarest flowers with only a couple of known clumps. I am now the proud owner of a number of plants of Cypripedium kentuckiense or Kentucky Lady’s Slipper, a less rare but stunningly beautiful American species and I shall be reporting on their progress throughout the season. Nights here in central France are down to -3°C at the moment, with clear, sunny days reaching around 13°C, so although they are said to be hardy down to -20°C I am taking no chances: for the time being they are staying under protection in their pots. The company offers five species of Slipper Orchid and I was told they have another 100,000 Kentucky back at the nursery – more than are said to exist in the wild.

Part of the Plant Planet stand

Another intriguing stand was that of Plant Planet. Their idea is to take plants threatened with extinction in the wild and popularise them to ensure their survival. To this end they use micropropagation techniques to create large numbers of plants, and amusing marketing campaigns to get them known by the widest possible clientele. Their range includes Red List plants like the Hawaiian Palm, Brighamia insignis, Gloxinia-like Sinningia leucotrichia (named Puppy Ears for its silky foliage), Euphotbia milii ‘Lucky Eight’ , Calathea ‘Network’ (a part which apparently thrives in the darkest corners of a house) and Sansevieria ‘Friends’, voted Student Plant of the Year for its indestructability.

Rivers of Snowdrops

The Cher in flood 1

Its been wet, very wet, and the River Cher is as high as it can safely be.

The Cher in flood 2

We walked the dog out to the old mill to see what the flooding looked like and to admire the Snowdrops.

This is what we found…….

Drowning Snowdrops

Snowdrops at Chabris Mill

Alive and well in 2013

Jasminium nudiflora in flower Christmas 2012

I am glad the world did not end at the end of last year. The French took it all in their stride, but various individuals descended on a tiny village in the Pyrenees to await the planet’s final days, convinced there were aliens hiding under the mountain and hoping to hitch a ride out of the impending disaster. Apparently the Mayans, or perhaps the Aztecs, said so. No-one could pretend the health of the planet is in good shape these days but that particular hiccup seems to have passed us by safely; my wife’s birthday, Christmas and New Year were all celebrated by our household without difficulty.

Hebe Great Orme. This plant was raised from a cutting as an insurance – just as well as the mother plant died last winter.

In the meantime, I have had several requests for the results of my Christmas garden flowers survey so here is the small list of flowers from our garden in Central France:

• Jasminium nudiflorum
• Wallflowers (in several colours)
• Hebe Great Orme
• Pansies (mixed colours)
• Erica carnea Springwood White
• Calendulas (self-seeded in the gravel)
• Mahonia media Charity
• Viburnum tinus
• Helleborus nigra
• Helleborus foetidus

In addition we have a house full of orchids, a couple of Poinsettias’ and a Cyclamen in the windowsills, all flowering their hearts out and a real joy at this grey time of year.

You might like to compare this list to last years, when we had 31 plants in flower following a period of very mild weather: http://gardendesigncompany.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/in-flower-this-christmas/

None stop flowering in Almeria, Spain

Immediately after Christmas I had business in southern Spain, where it was a very different story. Gardens and street planting featured many flowering plants, most of which would be treated as houseplants in this part of the world.

Slugs in the electrics and other gardening stories

It’s been a funny week one way and another: exciting and satisfying, disappointing and frustrating in turns. 1^st December saw our first frost worthy of the name (I know I talked about one in October but that was hardly cold enough to count) and yesterday we woke to a very hard one by our standards, with temperatures down to -6°C overnight. Yesterday we had clear skies and a crisp but gorgeously sunny day, while today we are being treated to cold drizzle and around 1/3^rd France is covered in snow. Ooh, the sun’s just come out!

The week started well. I was asked by the town Tourist Office, entirely run by volunteers, if I would help them set up a web site. I registered a name (Chabris-tourisme.fr) and created a five page site to get them started and they loved it. The hard part came when I had to get the Tourist Office committee to do things like sign a bank mandate for the URL registration and site hosting. They promise it will be done but the hosting company is now starting to get agitated. The company is French, so I imagine they will understand that when someone says “tomorrow”, they mean it should be done by Christmas; certainly in January or February…..almost certainly!

The garden Design Academy green roof on the tool shed

Ah well, that work is now on the back burner so I was able to get on with some web site additions of my own, adding an exciting new course to the Garden Design Academy program and featuring it as Course of the Month. Green Walls and Green Roof Gardening have been the subject of much interest lately and even the UK government is promoting their use in the cities as a response to the challenge to global warming. This course is timely therefore and we have high hopes for it both in the UK, where universities and companies have been researching the techniques for some time and in Europe, where a number of high profile examples have been constructed.

Next week I hope to post details of another new course, much requested by the Industry: Horticultural therapy. I would have done it this week, but we had no power in the house Wednesday and it took all day to get it fixed. We woke up to a cold house and soon realised that we had a power cut of some sort. Electrical systems are different in France to what we are used to in the UK, but I did the rounds of the three circuit-breaker fuse boxes in various corners of the house before braving the cold to look outside where a box in the garden houses the incoming current and associated equipment. I could find no problem anywhere, apart from the lack of power. We rang EDF, our supplier, to explain our problem. The lady at the help desk who we spoke to after ten minutes, had us do the tour of the boxes again and concluded it was not her problem and that we should get an electrician in. We did so and he checked everything and confirmed it was an EDF problem as no power was getting to the house. Who’d have thought?

Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii ‘Profusion’ in Chabris park

We rang again and again, with the batteries of our mobile phones rapidly failing, but could not arrive at a point where someone was prepared to deal with the problem. Hearing a noise in the street, I noticed that EDF engineers where working outside the football stadium around the corner. I begged, pleaded and exaggerated in bad French until one of the team agreed to help. He spent the next few hours in the freezing rain, me holding an umbrella, trying to work out what needed to be done but eventually he concluded that a slug or snail had crawled in overnight and passed across two live contacts, frying the electrical system and ruining its chances of a merry 2013. By the end of the day we had power and more importantly heat, and life slowly returned to some semblance of normality.

Yesterday seemed hardly more productive but at the same time fantastically so. I have had eye problems since the age of fourteen, nothing that could not be corrected by spectacles, you understand, but five years ago I had a series of operations which, amongst other things removed cataracts in both eyes. Apparently that was not the end of it and I needed laser treatment as part of a standard further stage in the long running saga. This work was completed at a clinic in Tours yesterday and now I can see again – the difference in my eyesight is quite incredible! It took all day, of course, and I was ready for an early night by nine o’clock, but it’s done now and I can start reading again without a magnifying glass and a glass of fortifying spirits. What a relief!

Earlier in the week I had another challenging day. Someone pointed out that the contact form on our ‘all singing, all dancing’ Garden Design Co. web site was not working and we concluded that it had not done so for a long while, perhaps explaining why Elton John has not asked me to redesign his garden. Looking at the site for the first time in ages, we have decided it is in need of a complete overhaul so I spent several hours trawling the internet for inspiration. Finding something we thought suitable, I then set about designing a new site based on this design, only to find that the programming required to achieve the clever effects which so attracted us was completely beyond my capabilities. I started again with our second choice but ran up against the same set of problems: Flash coding is not something I understand. Finally I settled on a third design and found I could do everything required to achieve it after a bit of a struggle. I sent a copy to my son, a professional web site designer, who informed me at great length why he hated it. Fortunately we live in a wine producing area and have several hundred bottles in the cellar! He’ll love it when it’s finished.

Helleborus niger

In the garden, we are pleased to have Helleborus niger in flower by the front step, the traditional place to have it ward off evil spirits. Another was given to us as a present last week, a variety in the Helleborus Gold Collection called HGC Jacob and no doubt available from a garden centre near you. I shall be interested to note the differences between these two as the season progresses but at the moment my little plant has larger flowers (actually only one) while the new one has a large number of smaller flowers. The new plant has been micropropagated and cultivated under protection so it will take a while for it to settle down and show how it really grows under garden conditions. One of the plants may end up being planted under our Sequoia tree.

Just Pear-fect!

I have only rarely grown Pear trees and never with much success, so I was amazed to discover when we started to explore our adopted village in central France, that Europe’s largest private pear collection was held in a plot near the vineyard. The grower in question has amassed nearly 650 different varieties, some of them on the edge of extinction and trained them in 20 different forms. His apple trees number over 300 and he has many other fruit trees besides.

A botanical artist of some considerable talent (the illustartions here are not his), whose art is much sought after, his collection started as 60 potted plants which he was meticulously painting, recording them throughout the seasons. The cultivars grew, as these things do, and he eventually set up his orchard on its present site. The work involved in their care is huge and he has taken the decision to reduce the collection to more manageable proportions. I am one of a few who have benefited from this decision, having acquired the following for my own garden:

1. Belle et Bonne d’ézée
2. Beurré d’Amanlis
3. Beurré Bretonneau
4. Beurré Dubuisson
5. Duc de Bordeaux du Mas
6. Graft Holtke
7. Mouille bouche d’été
8. Olivier de Serres
9. Starkrimson Clapp’s Rouge

Many of these are local or ancient varieties and all are beautifully trained espaliers in “U”, “Double U” “Palmette Verrier” and single cordon forms. We are very excited to have acquired these specimens and proud to be offered the opportunity to cultivate and preserve them. We will be carefully nurturing them through their first couple of seasons after the shock of their transplantation and continue to prune them to maintain their current elegant forms. My next job is to set up a system of support wires and rods, to ensure they are securely held into the shapes they have been trained to.

Other gardening tasks have kept me very busy this autumn. I was keen to lift the Cannas before the frost and have them now stored in the log cabin for the winter. The five varieties we bought this year have performed well, some putting on huge amounts of growth to form large clumps, while others have flowered but remained relatively small. They have all been lifted, cut back, divided where necessary and potted in leaf-mound. They will be kept ticking over in the heated cabin until it is safe to bring them out again next year. Not having a greenhouse these days, the cabin is being increasingly used for overwintering plants, although we keep hardier specimens, young shrubs and the like, in the north –facing conservatory.

We have a number of Dahlias and sometimes we lift them but other years we don’t. A small white one certainly needs moving from the front to the rear, where it can join other new plants in the White Border. A huge orange variety suffered last year, from damp as much as cold and I think this will be lifted for the winter.

Autumn is a great time for planting, but also for moving plants that have not performed well in certain spots or which are being swamped by more vigorous neighbours. I have replanted half of the Gaillardias, which were sown this year and have flowered well, so that other parts of the garden are brightened up next year. Other seed raised perennials like Gauria lindheimeri and Penstemon are also on the move. F1 hybrid Wallflowers are looking very good in the patch of garden where I planted them out in the spring. I am gradually lifting these and spreading them around the garden to provide a spring display – although there is some flower evident even now.

A Hibiscus, on the other hand, has not grown at all well and has been lifted from under a Miscanthus and given a better position in full sun. No doubt other shrubs will also be repositioned in the next few weeks.

Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Worplesdon’

The autumn is giving us a visual treat in the form of leaf colour, with our Cherry trees looking particularly good. Liquidamber is a feature of gardens and parks in the area and these too, depanding on variety, are looking amazing at the moment.

The first frosts of autumn 2012.

After a very mild period the warm air has rushed back down to North Africa or wherever it came from, leaving a vacuum to be filled by cold winds from the far north of Europe and Russia. The Mediterranean regions have been experiencing violent storms and rain in unreasonable quantities (“a month’s rain in an hour” and similar phrases are frequently heard on weather reports) confirming the wisdom of our choice of region to settle in. Not for us the extremes of other parts of France. In the meantime the east coast of the United States is being battered by hurricane Sandy.

Autumn colour from Rhus in a garden in Chabris, central France

The first frost last night touched some of the more tender plants and I have been out collecting pots from the garden and putting them under cover, either in the unheated conservatory at the front of the house or in the cabin in the back garden. Here, I have constructed a bench from an old cupboard door laid over a couple of desks, in front of a large, south facing window. Electric heaters should keep plants cosy at around 12°C over winter: ideal from Geraniums, Fuchsias, Salvias, Brugmansia, Abutilon and the like, of which we have plenty.

Our so-called hardy banana has been wrapped up in straw and fleece in an attempt to keep it alive out-of-doors. Time will tell if this was the wisest approach. It is also time to lift the Dahlias and Cannas to get them stored in boxes of leaf mould away from the cold for the season. Dahlias will often overwinter in the ground here – we generally leave Gladioli in the beds too – but I have also lost a few. Perhaps this technique of lifting and overwintering will ensure greater survival rates.

Thompson and Morgan have suggested in a recent newsletter that gardeners should be sowing seeds of perennials now, leaving them to germinate in a cold-frame. I shall have a look to see what packets of seed I might have and give this a go. I have collected Lilium regale seed as I did last year and have it in mind to sow a few ornamental grasses like Purple Millet, but I may have to fight off the birds feeding on the seed-heads! Our old conservatory should serve very well as a cold-frame.

Pyracantha berries sparkling in the clear autumn sun today.

It’s turning into a very good year for Pyracantha this year, with huge crops of berries in a range of bright colours on plants throughout the town. We have just one named hybrid in the garden, which I am patiently training along an ugly concrete boundary fence, but several which have arrived as seedlings thanks to the gardening efforts of wild birds. The photograph is of one of a pair in an abandoned garden in the square close to our house. The other was eaten by a camel when the circus came to town, but is recovering well!. Red, orange and yellow berried forms can all be seen in local gardens and it is often used as a thorny boundary hedge. Mixed berry colour hedges can look particularly attractive but some care has to be exercised when pruning to ensure they produce flowers and berries.

A typical French Autumn

Autumn leaf and flower colour from Rhus and Miscanthus in our garden this morning.

Every day this week has been different to the last. Today it is mild and drizzling on and off, while yesterday it was dry, with just a few clouds passing by. The day before was a most glorious warm, sunny day but it began with a hint of frost. Sunday it poured down while Saturday it kept mostly dry – a bonus for guests who I took to see the grape harvest coming in at local vineyards. In short, a typical autumn week in central France.

In the town, around the market and in the supermarket, all the talk is about mushrooms, or the lack of them. We have been mushroom hunting on our daily walks with the dog and while we bring back a handful most days, there are very few about. The weather is looking encouraging however, after many months without any serious rain, so we are hoping for great things by the end of this or the following week.

Chantal is making her annual autumn jelly from fruit collected on our walks: pears, apples and grapes left behind by the picking machine. To this she has added currents and other soft fruit preserved after picking this summer and a few herbs and spices for luck. We will be bottling soon and look forward to trying it out on friends who regularly offer us examples of their own culinary efforts to try. Last week the Marquis dropped around with a sample of his Two Salmons Rillettes and our lady plumber turned up one evening with freshly hunted venison. Food is important to the people of this community and recipes are commonly argued over in the market place.

Japanese Anemones continue to provide colour

Out in the garden I am pleased to have the ground wetted as I have been waiting to start cultivating the soil for our new lawn. The lawn will be sown as soon as I can so that it will germinate and establish itself before the winter. We are trying to rehabilitate a section of the garden ruined when the swimming pool went in and to link it with an area currently the site of a very poor quality lawn. I can manage about 50 sq.m. a day fighting with the rotavator, after which I need a couple of days of rest – one more push should see the hard work done though. The next task will be the raking off of old grass, weeds and stone, and creating rough levels using new lawn edging secured along the existing beds. The ground will then be trodden down firmly, levelled again to a nice tilth and finally sown with grass seed. A last gentle rake over and we leave it to Nature to work its wonders.

Many of the bedding and herbaceous plants are having a second lease of life in this damp and temperate season: the Begonias have never looked so good, Pot Marigold (Calendula) are in full flower and throughout the garden there are splashes of colour here and there. It looks as if the Salvia Golden Delicious will flower this year: each shoot is carrying a flower bud and one is just starting to show red. We continue to pick tomatoes and our lettuce crop is the best we have had all year.

Summer bedding has never looked so good!

In the park the rain has resulted in a huge rise in the level of the river Cher, but not enough to put off 60 or more swans who took up residence earlier in the week. The gardeners are busily removing summer bedding and replacing it with a mixture of winter and spring flowering plants. I managed to beg a few of last season’s plants from them for our own garden: bedding Dahlias and purple grasses, no longer. I have finished taking cuttings of tender plants for the year but have tried some Holly again, a particularly attractive form which grows by the town campsite.

On Friday I am taking clients to Bourgueil to look at vineyards and taste some wine, while on Saturday or Sunday we’ll all take a trip to the Courson Plant Fair, so it’s a busy week all ’round. We are watching the weather.