Half of Europe is coping with storms and floods and in the USA they are suffering from a cold blast of Arctic weather conditions; here in the centre of France, 2014 has started mild and dry. I don’t mean to sound smug and my fear is that the cold will come to us later, causing the sort of damage to plants that we witnessed a couple of years ago, when it dropped to -24°C and the vineyards died throughout the region.
I had a great deal of office work to catch up on after the Christmas break but the opportunity of getting back out in the garden has finally presented itself. Today I started installing the raised beds for the new vegetable garden behind the Garden Design Academy classroom. This small space has been used as a dumping ground for too long and I am delighted to be finally sorting it out.
Under construction – the first two raised beds installed today.
When completed there will be four raised beds, arranged in a formal grid and connected by a pergola. The beds are made from local oak but the pergola will either be a Hillhout-style structure in treated pine or something more rustic and artistic, handmade from willow. I have so far installed two of these beds, having earlier planted three peach bushes along the south facing side of the classroom cabin. Paths one metre wide will divide the raised beds and the 1.2m wide ground-level beds along the garden wall and behind the classroom. It would be lovely to surface these paths in brick but I suspect this will have to wait for another year.
Nandina domestica with flowers and berries in the local park.
Water for this garden will soon be an issue and this will prompt me to install the gutters on the cabin – they have be laying there for several years now – and arrange to collect the rain water in a butt of some sort which has yet to be obtained. The compost area is also in a sorry state and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt properly. I have a collection of sturdy transport pallets which I shall use to construct the new compost bays.
If only there were eight or nine days in the week!
A Gardener in France 