Picking up the pieces – the joys and frustrations of the spring garden

Easter weekend; it’s cooler than we would like but the predicted rains did not come, much to the pleasure of visitors and the disappointment of local gardeners, who have not seen rain in months. The annual Donkey Fair and flea market took over the streets of nearby Poulaine, a huge success, attracting crowds of locals and weekend trippers from as far away as the capital, Paris.

Cherry blossom time in central France

Local gardens, ours included, are bursting with spring blossom – Daffs and tulips going over, Cherries at their peak and Lilac just starting – distracting the eye from the damage caused by the single tough week of winter we experienced this year. Each day we are out there, checking for signs of life from plants which look like they will never recover. And each day there is another happy discovery of tiny buds opening at the base of an otherwise lifeless shrub, or shoots pushing up from a bare patch of ground.

Once the extent of the problem is clear I can get out the secateurs, cutting out dead wood to make way for new healthy shots. Santolina was hard pruned a couple of weeks ago and is now covered with tiny green leaves; Phlomis, both P. fruticosa and P. purpurea, have recently had the same treatment. Reddish buds are expanding all along the shots of the flowering Pomegranate, Punica granatum ‘Rubrum Flore Pleno’, a fine little plant given to me by a local gardener. I have since successfully taken cuttings from a large shrub in a friend’s garden and those too are budding up.

Still a few Tulis around

Our three Phygelius varieties are all now starting to grow from ground level and today I spotted buds at the base of the hardy Fuchsia magellanica gracilis ‘Tricolor’. As exciting as all this is, there are also disappointments. Two varieties of Phormium look as if they have departed this world, along with Hebe Great Orme and a white flowering species whose name escapes me for the moment. You can knock me over with a feather if life returns to our Leycesteria Golden Lanterns: such a pity.

Lemon trees? Don’t talk to me about Lemon trees! We have lost many, but not all, of our Camellias and the Mimosa, Sophora, and Erythrina are no longer with us. They can stay in the ground for a while yet to give them a chance to prove me wrong. A few plants bought this winter didn’t even see the soil before they succumbed – I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I’m bad at this gardening lark, but unfortunately the list is even longer than this. I refuse to dwell on it further. A gardener has to develop a philosophical attitude or you would give up after the first few disasters. Failure comes with the territory I’m afraid.

The plant fair at Chateau de La Bordaisiere

Easter Monday is a public holiday and the third day of the plant fair at La Bourdaisiere, a chateau close to Tours in the Indre-et Loire. I have talked about this chateau and its amazing tomato collection before, but this was our first visit. It is a lovely chateau with formal terraces and Italianate stairways in a wooded park above the River Cher. The walled vegetable garden is around 4 acres in size and in the season they also have a notable Dahlia display. The plant fair was spread around the grounds encouraging visitors to explore as much as possible. There was a good selection of plant nurseries and some interesting gardening accessories but to my surprise we left empty-handed, apart from a large sack of a new mulching material called Strulch, developed by Leeds University and marketed by an English company. Perhaps it’s just as well, with the new swimming pool excavations causing chaos throughout the garden. Time enough to buy more plants when this work is done and a new planting plan agreed upon.

Winter arrives in France (at last!)

Holly berries in the snow

Somehow we all knew it would end in tears. The weather has been milder than Nature intended throughout the winter; plants have been flowering unseasonably and the summer bedding seems to have hardly noticed the passing of the months. Farmers, growers and gardeners, while perhaps enjoying the show, have been nervous for some time, fearing damage to blossoms and the ruining of crops when and if the weather finally turned cold. Peach and Apricot growers in the South-West have featured on the evening news, looking more than a little concerned.

Phormium - New Zealand Flax

Yesterday the snow arrived and we are told that not far behind are bitter Siberian winds. Walking the dog in the countryside has been a pleasure however, with the sun out and photogenic scenes at every turn.

In the meantime the local gardening shop’s promotional brochure arrived today, highlighting the agrarian nature of this country and its people. The leaflet features seed potatoes, nothing unusual there, but also rotavators with reversible plough attachments, bee hives – the real thing, not ornaments – and hatching equipment for your chicken eggs. When was the last time you saw these in your local Wyevale? Not to be left out, the hypermarket is offering above-ground swimming pools, ride-on mowers and a range of rainwater recovery kits, including one utilising linked underground storage tanks, each of 2650L capacity. Gardening is different in France, but just as big as in the UK.

Mimosa in the front garden at the Garden Design Academy

The mushroom glut and other good gardening news.

With the unseasonal weather set to continue well into August, Nature seems very confused. The recent rains have provided a huge glut of edible (and other) fungi which are normally expected in the autumn and we have been washing, slicing and freezing basket-loads of Ceps every day for a week or more. It has made the French national news broadcasts: initially upbeat reports of nature’s bounty and impromptu mushroom markets in the south-west, but now including cautionary notes as the hospitals fill up with poisoned tourists. It pays to know what you are putting in your mouth, I find.

Abelia Kaleidoscope

A summer of mild, wet weather is not what we signed up for when we decided to cross the Channel and settle in central France. It has brought benifits however, in terms of garden plant growth. Establishing a new garden is an expensive affair, especially if you have to buy plants at French retail prices. The humidity has helped the settling in of these treasures and for that we are most grateful. A large number of plants have been bought this year but recent purchases have included a new variety of Abelia,  A. ‘Kaleidoscope’, bred for its leaf color and dense, compact form. I have planted it in our new front bed, next to clumps of orange Crocosmia and scarlet Phygelius, both blooming as we speak, and in front of another new plant, Erythrina x. bidwillii, currently in bud but promising clusters of pea-shaped, dark red flowers. This hot scheme should be worth building on as more plants become available, creating a stunning show against a sunny garden wall, which already features Sophora and Mimosa and should be ideal for other half-hardy plants.

Lagerstroemiais high on my wish list for this bed; we now have three varieties of this plant which for me is still very exotic and I would like to try taking cuttings from a red-flowering form for the front and perhaps a softer pink than we currently grow, for the back garden. The oldest of our specimens, a Demartis variety called Yang Tse, was planted in half sun but has since been moved to a much warmer spot in the gravel patio. It is now in full flower while the other two, a white and a red, are still in bud. I have my eyes open now for suitable plants and will no doubt shortly start begging for cuttings.

I have been taking lots of cuttings recently, inspired by students who are doing the same on our Plant Propagation for Beginners course. I have a small plastic greenhouse with undersoil heating installed in the loft under a Velux window and I am having great fun swapping cuttings with neighbours and or increasing some of our own plants to give away to friends. Our first batches are now rooted and being hardened off in a sheltered spot and include Campsis, Hydrangea paniculata, Viburnum bodnatensis and pomegranate.

In the mean time back in the loft we have Brugmansia, Rosemary, Curry Plant, Ceratostigma, Acer palmatum, Camellia and Cornus florida all doing well. I have always loved propagation and have had several opportunities to grow plants from seed or cuttings on a commercial scale. As a lad, I even entered the Young Propagator of the Year competition run by Horticulture Week. The temptation to start a nursery when we moved to France was only held at bay by lack of garden space and perhaps it is just as well: the Academy is more than enough to keep me occupied.

French garden centres, snow, Mimosa and Moth Orchids

When my trusty leather working boots gave up on me this autumn I bought a new pair from one of the better garden centres locally. I like to drop in on Gamme Vert every so often but only rarely spend money there. Like most French garden centres, they have a limited range of plants at high prices and in the shop itself I am always surprised by their stock – both what they do sell and the things they don’t.

They carry a very good range of outdoor clothing however and I was pleased with the boots I selected, until two months later when a hook for the laces broke. I could not find the receipt and having had a poor experience with nurseries when plants died I was preparing for a fight. My lecture entitled Customer Relations and Good Retailing Practices was prepared but in the event not needed: they exchanged the books promptly and politely. I was so taken aback I bought a Mimosa to celebrate – see, being good to clients makes good business sense!

Mimosa Le Gaulois

Mimosa Le Gaulois is a cross between A. dealbata and A. baileyana, bred in the Cote d’Azure in the 1900′s as a cut flower variety. These days it is grown alongside later-flowering Le Gaulois ‘Astier’ to extend the season. Having lost a young ‘Mireille’ to the cold a year or two back we were keen to replace it and bring some winter colour into the garden. I carefully selected a strong, grafted plant and negotiated a small discount, thus concluding our business very satisfactorily. The Mimosa will stay in the cool of the front conservatory to fill the structure with flower and scent over winter and be planted in the garden in the spring. My plan is to plant an evergreen shrub over it to provide protection during particularly hard winters.

The TV news is full of snow reports, with regions from the channel coast to the Dordogne and of course, the mountain areas, suffering from its effects. Here in the Centre we have seen no more than a few flakes, but this may change (it is just starting to snow now). There have been four nights of frost so far this season and yesterday the temperatures dropped to -2°C, lower out in the sticks. A visiting gardening enthusiast expressed surprise that we grow Olive outside and suggested Phormiums should be protected. Cold hardiness is a funny thing, with so many different factors resulting in success or failure to survive the winter. We benefit here from a light soil which does not get too wet in the winter. It also warms up early and the long growing season we enjoy is another benefit. The garden is completely enclosed, providing a high degree of shelter from damaging winds while our practice of mulching and close planting protects venerable roots. The climate in the Centre is kind, neither too hot in the summer nor too cold in the winter and rainfall is sufficient but not excessive. All these factors combined allow me to grow a wider range of plants than I was able to in southern England, although I also take more risks here and loose a few plants as a result.

Plant maturity is another issue, with the surface roots of newly planted stock particularly venerable.We have planted Lagerstroemia each year for the last three years and the first winter is always a worry. The cold weather usually takes all but a single shoot to grow the following spring but by the second winter the plant is strong enough to survive anything our climate can throw at it.

Moth Orchid - Phalaenopsis

With little to be done in the garden we are delighted that our collection of Moth Orchids – Phalaenopsis -  which increases by one or two specimens each year, is beginning to come back into flower. In truth, there is hardly a day of the year when at least one of them is not in flower. They surround us with life and colour and on Sundays at this time of the year we start  planning next season’s garden, with the seed catalogues out and important decisions to be made.

Happy New Year

Yes, I know its nearly the end of January, but life got in the way.

Anyway, I’m here now.

I gather there are 1.7 million Ha of forests in the SW of France and 60% of them have been damaged by the hurricane-force winds on Friday night.

France does have weather in bucket loads. In this gentle corner of central France we seem to be protected from the worst of it which ever direction it comes from, but even we had tempertures down to -12 degress C for a while earlier this month and snow lay on the ground for a week.

Even down on the Med they have had snow this year and Mimosa flower growers have had this and terrible winds to contend with. Our own Mimosa looked lovely with a bit of snow on it but now looks very ill indeed.

Mimosa in the snow

It remains to be seen what damage has been caused to potted plants but we put our Lemon trees in the dining room during the coldest period and they are looking fine: covered in plaster and brick dust, but otherwise fine.

We have invested in a new garden toy, a must-have for every real man in rural France: a chain saw. We were just about to rush out and buy one at around 350 Euros when Chantal was taken down by a bug (the too much wine bug?). Anyway, I decided to see what Ebay may have for us, expecting little, as the French reallyhaven’t got the hang of it. The Germans have, however and before long we had successfully bid for a shiny new orange 2-stroke chainsaw for 66 Euros delivered.

I too have been hiding in bed for a week feeling sorry for myself so the toy has yet to be tested. Watch this space to see how long it takes me to blow it up / cut my hand off / kill next doors’ cat………