Savage Grace

Approaching rain sending seagulls inland

The wet theme appears to be continuing through November: there's drama in the skies but little chance to enjoy the trees' autumn colour before their leaves are whipped away by an unforgiving wind.

Since most of our gardening jobs are temporarily on hold, I thought I'd use this blog to highlight some of the hardy "thugs" of our local plantworld which you might think twice before accepting into your little corner of paradise.  Many of these appear innocent and beguiling in their infancy, but we've learned from bitter experience - both in our garden and in others - that they can turn into horrors after just a couple of years.

A wild and woolly Lonicera periclymenum

It probably took a bit longer than that to grow this honeysuckle up a pair of ash trees in order to screen our garden from the back lane.  To start with we welcomed its fragrant blooms and the fact that it remained fairly evergreen, providing a good nest site for our tuneful blackbirds...

But this year we decided it was screening too much light from the garden and had scrambled up too high for pruning; so out came the shears and I held the ladder steady while Christina hacked it all down. We must have taken three trailer-loads to the dump, uncovering in the process several deep welts made by honeysuckle stems twining around the trunk of a young ash tree.

Cruelty to trees

I doubt if this kind of damage would happen so quickly in the UK but it does demonstrate how you have to take into account the added vigour of all climbers grown over here. Honeysuckle certainly makes a lovely hedge - but can easily bring down the wire fence that it's grown on.  Be warned!

Whereas one can tolerate a certain amount of ivy in an English garden, here it not only degrades wood and stonework but also seeds itself liberally in the most awkward places and is difficult to dislodge from under walls and hedges.  I'm sure it's been the ruination of many a good tree and we try to operate a policy of zero-tolerance.

Wisteria sinensis looking deceptively innocent

And much as I admire wisteria, which blooms abundantly in this climate, I've come to realise that it needs a very firm supporting structure for its fast-growing and ultimately weighty branches. 


Even a heavy-gauge wire fence is no match for those strong, twining stems.

Ouch, that hurts!

I'm afraid we took drastic action with the one in this photo, chopping into the main trunk so that hopefully it can be grown as a standard tree, which can still produce lots of lovely trailing blooms without wrecking the fence.

Another climber which is a popular adornment to gateposts and railings is the exotic trumpet vine or Campsis grandiflora, known as 'bignon' in French.  It's popular with the British and does look wonderfully tropical but it also throws up no end of shoots which can travel all over the garden and appear uninvited in the middle of lawns and flowerbeds.  

Valerian (Centranthus rubra)

Aside from such over-enthusiastic climbers, there are other innocuous garden plants such as wallflowers, antirrinhums, valerian and even hollyhocks which can vastly outgrow their designated sites by developing huge roots and/or very woody stems.  Valerian's tuberous root system can aid the downfall of a stone wall and its fluffy little seeds will ensure that you're never without its fleshy offspring somewhere in the garden. Better not to dally with it in the first place!

There's even more temptation to grow architectural specimens such as the larger euphorbias and the much-admired Acanthus mollis or Bear's Breeches.

Euphorbia characias wulfenii,
with smaller cousin myrsinites

I've mentioned Acanthus in a previous post and it's definitely something to be kept separate from the rest of the garden; when chopped down, it has a tendency to push up elsewhere and those fleshy roots are very hard to eradicate.

The large Euphorbia characias is fine for a couple of years and looks splendid in early spring when there isn't much else around; but clumps soon get overly big and woody and those sap-leaking stems are a pig to dispose of, making a mess of your secateurs and possibly giving you a skin rash into the bargain.  Smaller versions, like Euphorbia myrsinites, are useful ground cover and still provide that striking acid green to liven up your border.

Yucca recurvifolia

Another tempting choice for a hot, dry climate is Yucca recurvifolia, which can grow over two metres high and produces magnificent bell-shaped blooms. These look fabulous for about 10 days if you're lucky but, once the flowers fall, it leaves behind a woody stem which is sometimes tough to remove, particularly if you have to run the gauntlet of sharp, spiny leaves.



These leaves are attractive when young but pretty lethal even with gardening gloves.  The problem arises as the shrub matures and spreads, becoming ever more unmanageable with its sharp spikes until you eventually have to take a chainsaw and cut through the base; even then, fresh shoots continue to sprout and may take years to eradicate.  A mega-thug!

But I don't want to sound as if you'll be severely limited in what you can safely grow because rest-assured there are nearly always alternatives and this is what makes gardening so interesting.  You may not find them at your local garden centre but perusing a good seed catalogue, like Chiltern's which I've mentioned before, will often describe more garden-friendly varieties of plants, including those which have been accorded the RHS Award of Garden Merit.  If you don't want to grow something from seed, then at least you'll be armed with the name of a  cultivar to search for at a plant fair - French horticulturalists are usually well-informed and all too happy to help!

Spindleberries in the wild

Last but not least, I would nominate Euonymus as my Shrub of the Month for November.  In England it's known as Spindleberry and the wild Euonymus europaeus grows on chalky soil all around here, producing eye-catching clusters of orange and pink berries. 

Plant breeders have cultivated many interesting varieties of Euonymus, some with evergreen and variegated leaves, others with yellow or red-tinted leaves which fall in autumn. I'd recommend having at least one Spindleberry in your garden, either as a specimen shrub or as part of a mixed hedge.

Our valley finally parading its autumn colours!

Taking Stock

Horse grazing on nearby marais

The month of October sees our landscape slip inexorably from late summer into autumn.  Heavy rainfall seemed to start earlier than usual this year, interfering with the grape harvest (vendange), leaving trails of mud on the road from freshly ploughed fields.

Egret amongst sea asters

But gusty winds soon dry the reedbeds and grassy marais, blowing through waves of sea asters along the shore, tossing their fluffy seedheads in the bright light and sending up fine wisps of spiders' silk to travel on air currents and catch on your clothes in passing.

Now's the time to take stock in the garden: pruning and shredding offcuts of woody shrubs; chopping down herbaceous stems and adding them to the compost heap.  (It's a good idea to turn the heap beforehand so that it's fully activated and ready to go!)

A couple of gardening enthusiasts, Jane and Stuart, spent a morning performing some necessary surgery on our tall ash trees, carefully manoeuvering the heavy branches with ropes to avoid any collateral damage.

They did a fine job and filled our log shed with an ample supply of fuel for our two open fires and the woodburning stove.

Christina will tell you that the sight of a well-packed log shed is as pleasing as a fully-stocked fridge!

Once the clearing up has been accomplished, you get a better sense of what plants might need dividing and replanting.  As the soil is warm and moist, it's a great opportunity to move almost anything and I look for the odd space to cram in some spring bulbs, perhaps overplanting them with ground-cover such as aubretia or Campanula poscharskyana - both of which root easily from cuttings at this time of year.

Two varieties of Cyclamen hederifolium have recently come into flower under the ash trees and their elegant blooms really glow against the dark background of leaf-litter. 

It's interesting that their marbled leaves don't really appear until March and I see from looking at my picture files that the white variety has a different leaf shape and markings to the pink one.  

Pink on the left and White on the right!

Both are very pretty and provide eye-catching colour in a dry woodland area where little else will thrive.

Although many shrubs are notable for their foliage right now, I'm nominating the understated - but never underrated - Eleagnus x ebbingei as my Shrub of the Month. 

We recently planted several as a hedge in the front south-facing garden where they have to withstand salty winds off the estuary.  They thrived through our dry summer and two of them have just rewarded us with small, beautifully fragrant flowers which are almost hidden under the greyish-green felted leaves.  Their scent is all the more mysterious because the uninitiated can't see where it's coming from; but I have yet to capture its essence on camera, so you'll just have to trust me that Eleagnus makes an excellent hedging plant.

Meanwhile, those purple salvias are still flowering their socks off in the herb bed and, until a recent rainy spell, were continuing to attract nectar-seeking insects.

Clouded-yellow butterfly

We've almost finished planting up this new bed with a variety of herbs and edging plants and I have a small area set aside for lavender cuttings, thinking ahead to next year when there'll be a need for fresh plants along the driveway.  I've also filled my cold frame with seedlings which I'm hoping to over-winter and plant out in spring... always assuming there's any space left!