Creeping Colour



Tulipa Clusiana 'Lady Jane'

After the early splashes of colour provided by crocus, and those dark velvety anemones de Caen, it's refreshing to see the petals of these bright tulips opening up to the March sunshine.  I ordered some bulbs three years ago from a Dutch supplier and more or less chucked them down in different corners of the south-facing garden, where they have quickly naturalised.

Tulipa Kaufmanniana 'Ice Stick'

These species tulips are particuarly wiry and slender but not at all self-effacing.  They look quite demure when closed... but as they open you become aware of that brash painted stripe on the outer petal. 

Once fully open to the sun, you get the 'poached egg' effect of a rich yellow throat intensified by yellow stamens curled within.

 

You can see why they're sometimes referred to as the 'waterlily' type of tulip.

Tulipa Clusiana comes out a couple of weeks later and is even more delicate, its yellow interior speckled with dark brown stamens.

Being small but perfectly-formed, these early tulips have less foliage to worry about and give way gracefully to later perennials.  According to the bulb growers, they should flower in March to April in the south of England (though possibly not this year...)

Less striking but equally welcome are the flowers of Narcissus 'Sailboat', which open early and form a natural-looking group under the olive tree.  

Its petals are slightly reflexed and, again, there's little in the way of foliage to die down afterwards.   Nature provides a profusion of blooms in this climate, but once the sun comes out they soon begin to wither and there's nothing worse than having to look at a tangle of brown leaves, being slowly devoured by snails!

My aubretia bank has nearly come into full-flower now and is certainly doing its job of hiding a slope of unsightly rock and broken tile. 

In the top left of picture you can just see part of the pathway of oyster shells that we laid down over a weed-suppressing membrane. 

There’s a nearby beach on the Gironde Estuary where these empty shells tend to accumulate in piles, washed clean by countless tides; we discovered they’re ideal as ‘top-dressing’ for paths or used as a mulch around trees!  

Spring is really gathering pace now, I’m glad to say, and fat bumblebees are chasing one another from pieris to mahonia – the latter’s flowers are as sweetly-scented as freesias.

Last week we heard our first cuckoo and glimpsed the newly-arrived hoopoes, with their unmistakable crests and undulating woodpecker flight. 

The blackcap is back on our bird table, fighting off competition from great tits and sparrows, and swallows are once more ducking and diving over fields and ponds.

Although our climate is generally about 10 degrees warmer than southern England, I reckon we track the UK weather quite closely as we’re equally influenced by the jet stream.  Hence we’ve had a very wet winter and spring has come about 10 days later than normal, judging by the return of swallows and so forth.

Temperatures continue to be depressed by the north-easterly wind but overall there’s more sunshine than in England, so our soil is warmer and things like peas and beans are already flourishing.  At least our strong coastal winds provide one benefit in drying the soil more quickly so local farmers have been able to get on with their ploughing. 

And it won’t be long before the vines are bursting into life once more!

Clouds of Blossom

Why do we get such mad weather in March, just as the fruit trees break into blossom?  The past two weeks we've had howling gusts of wind, lashing rain, a bit of hail and some blinding sunshine... you have to be adaptable to survive the combined onslaught!



Almond (prunus dulcis)



Almond blossom is the first to break out, sometimes as early as February, giving the insects something to buzz about.  Our tree is about three years old now and we should be able to harvest a small bag of nuts this year. 

Collecting almonds is quite labour-intensive, so I can understand why they're relatively expensive to buy.  But it's lovely to hull them in the garden and eat the nuts when they're still soft and sweet.

Next to come out, trained against a south-facing wall, is the apricot seen here with almost an embarassment of blossom!  Last year it resulted in equally dense clusters of fruit which ripened in July and some of those are still in freezer bags waiting to take their place in a tarte. 

Apricot (prunus armeniaca)

The ever-helpful internet tells us that the name 'apricot' comes from the Latin word praecox, which means 'early ripening'.  

Looking at these pictures, I notice that their flowers are not dissimilar to those of the almond - white with a dark red centre.  (Just how many types of prunus are there, I wonder...?) 

Peach trees are also flowering now and their blossom is a delicate pink.  Our main tree is dying of some disease... it put on a great show last Spring but was finally a victim of its own success, the weight of fruit bringing down a couple of big branches.

I'm afraid we get so excited at the prospect of all this exotic fruit that we don't take the sensible precaution of thinning it out.  This would be kinder to the tree and probably result in larger, sweeter fruit!

Hillsides around here are bedecked with prunus spinosa, the spiny shrub which produces clouds of white blossom - sometimes known as 'blackthorn winter' when it coincides with a cold snap.  This is another prunus which seems to do exceptionally well in our mild climate, producing thick creamy swathes of blossom along the hedgerows.  In late Summer, these same hedges glow with abundant blue sloes.



A cultivated hedge of viburnum tinus and wild prunus spinosa



Viburnum tinus, also in full-flower now, is frequently used in gardens where it's useful as a slow-growing evergreen hedge that doesn't need too much pruning but produces many more flowers than you would see in England.  The example above has been left to do its own kind of 'cloud pruning'...!





Prunus 'Kojo no mai'

This little prunus hybrid came with us from England where I'd had it in a pot decorating the terrace.  It must be almost 20 years old now and has got its roots well established in the chalky subsoil of our coastal garden.  Its little flowers remind me of scattered confetti in the low evening light.

Another good shrub which arrived with us from Hampshire was this pieris 'Forest Flame' which puts on a lively show of red leaves and creamy flowers for weeks on end.  It attracts the fluffiest bumblebees you've ever seen and great tits like to linger on its branches as they queue up for fat-balls on our nearby bird table.

March stirrings

I've decided to start a monthly blog for anyone who might be thinking of moving to southwest France and wonders what it's like to garden in a different climate.  My partner, Christina, and I were both keen gardeners  when we lived in England, but "work" always seemed to get in the way when it was fine weather and we both longed to be outdoors.

Hence we moved to Charente Maritime where we can get an income from our holiday cottage whilst looking after various gardens. 

Back garden in September - seems a long way off now!

Many Brits own second homes in the area and like to have an English-style garden without being here all the time to maintain it.  This is where we help out!

Le jardin anglais is often admired by the French but in practice most of them prefer a low-maintenance option of grass dotted with the occasional fruit tree and/or shrub, which can be mown around once a week.  These still look pretty because such gardens are usually very well-tended, but possibly they lack imagination... on the other hand, our French neighbours do put a good deal of energy into their immaculate "potagers", so we can be equally admiring of those.
This is a great climate for growing plants as there's not much frost, the temperature rarely dips below -10'C, and we have long hours of sunshine all year round.  Plants and gardens mature quite quickly so it's a satisfying life for the impatient gardener.

We're just starting to get to grips with a new growing season after a particularly frustrating winter.  As in the UK, we've endured weeks of rain which have left the landscape pooled with unusual lakes and rivulets, not to mention those bright green lawns full of moss.


Bare bones of the garden in early March



But definitely the worst thing of all - in the ten years we've been here - has been the relentless rampage of weeds!  A damp, mildish winter means heaven for all manner of creeping, drilling, co-habiting seedlings which have taken up residence around our "choice" plants.  They converge into solid mats of greenery which are hard to dislodge without disturbing the roots of the good guys - it takes patience and skilled surgery to prise them out.

What I do love about March, however, is the discovery of all those other generous plants that have seeded themselves in unexpected places and are now romping away. 

We play host to babies of larkspur, viola, hellebores, foxgloves and Californian poppy - the latter seen here surrounded by a little forest of canes topped with empty snail shells.  (These totems aren't designed to deter slugs and snails so much as our cat, Couscous, who alights upon any empty space for his toilet!)

In complete contrast to our east-facing back garden, the herbs shown here are flourishing in a sheltered southerly garden which contains more rubble than real soil, providing the sharp drainage enjoyed by woody-stemmed lavender, thyme, rosemary and santolina. 

There are two types of santolina here: both produce yellow button flowers but the green mounded version (bottom right) smells exactly like olives.  The whole ensemble puts me in mind of a Greek hillside, even in midwinter.  Intoxicating!



Bank of aubretia, box and a small sedum



And talking of rubble-strewn areas, which dry out in summer but attract weeds when it rains, take a look at this sloping stretch of aubretia, soon to turn into a billowing mauve blanket.  I adore this little carpeter for its ability to withstand drought: it shrivels to practically nothing in September but comes bouncing back in March, almost by magic, and acts as a brilliant weed-suppressant.

This thick-pile carpet came about a couple of years ago after Christina had planted up some box cuttings which kept drying out in the sun.  Without really thinking, I surrounded them with a mulch of spent aubretia which I'd just cut off after it had flowered elsewhere in the garden. 

Come the damp autumn, I noticed with amazement that all these little seeds had germinated around the box cuttings!  So I did the same thing again last year, filling in any gaps with bunches of spent aubretia, and now there's scarcely room for anything else to germinate.  Try it yourself on a barren patch of stony soil.

Hope you've found something of interest in these glimpses of French gardens.  As Nature is getting so busy now, I'll probably be writing some more before the month is out... Happy Gardening!

If you want to see more pictures of the cottage and surrounding area, check out our website at www.charentefarmcottage.com