Lake District

Storm-tossed willows and poplars

Yes this winter monsoon is still upon us thanks to the Jet Stream being well and truly stuck. Pools of water which collected in rain-sodden fields have joined forces to create lakes in low-lying areas, some of them just outside towns.  There's a large market garden near here which has been half-submerged for a fortnight, its greenhouses incongruously marooned like glass islands in a blue ocean.

Free-range chickens after a rainstorm

On the plus-side, it's been a great season for willows and their golden stems sprout vividly against the grey skies of a passing storm.  

Now is the perfect time to plant a willow hedge along your perimeter (ensuring it's the statutory 50 cm inside your boundary) - simply push some off-cuts into the moist soil and watch them take root!

Pussy willow and hazel catkins

Fluffy Hedgerows

Catkins have been unfurling on many of the waterside trees and also on nut bushes like hazel,  soon to produce those lovely noisettes which French patissiers put to such good use!

Whereas we refer to these flowers as 'catkins', they are known as chatons or 'kittens' in French!

Storm Damage

There's no denying this is a difficult environment for trees, even if they are willows and able to absorb a huge amount of water.  The earth has been sodden for so long that another gale could well uproot some of the taller specimens.

Woodland trees in this part of France seem much more etiolated than comparable trees in England, doubtless due to the hotter and drier climate. They shoot up elegantly thin - unlike their more robust counterparts in the UK - collecting masses of ivy and mistletoe over the years which eventually lead to their downfall.

Beach at Meschers-sur-Gironde

Tons of driftwood has been washed up along the Gironde Estuary after recent winter storms.  Some pieces are more than four meters long but there are also many heavy trunks which could easily sink a small boat!

A couple of weeks ago, we found the bodies of five puffins washed ashore on this beach after a particularly strong gale.  They don't normally come this far south but we read that over 600 had been found on our shores, weakened by bad weather and lack of food.

So-called "Stinking Hellebore"

Garden colour

Mauve-striped crocus

Our drifts of hellebores continue to withstand the ravages of wind and rain. Christmas hellebores are now joined by the taller Helleborus foetidus, with its acid green flowers and sharply toothed leaves - weird but interesting!

Whenever it's sunny, bright clumps of crocus open up greedily to absorb heat on their stamens. Some varieties seem to come back more readily than others and one of the best we've found so far is a plump Dutch hybrid "Pickwick", which also stands up well to bad weather.   

Campanula lactiflora

Elsewhere the important ground-cover plants are producing carpets and cushions of greenery in an effort to clothe the soil and prevent any competition from weeds.

Whilst the campanula on the left can be a bit too invasive, it's easy enough to pull up unwanted plants whilst the earth is moist to stop them getting out of hand. This one flowers in early May and there are varieties in blue, pink and white - which form large clusters of open bells.

Campanula poscharskayana

I'm even more partial to the rockery version of Campanula which is great for edging and filling in crevices.  Again there are several varieties in shades of blue, white and mauve, forming neat little mounds which soon make a carpet if left to multiply, withstanding poor soil and arid conditions.  They're also easy to root

from offcuts at the moment.

Recently planted olive

Back on the subject of trees, I should emphasise to newcomers that the wind on these coasts (and even inland) can blow up in a matter of seconds, ripping off roof tiles and causing structural damage.  We've all been caught out at one time or another and even garden centres can be thrown into turmoil if their plants aren't firmly secured.

This particularly applies to saplings and young trees, as we just found out with this olive tree.  A thin bamboo stake is not enough!  Use a stout post set at an angle and secured with a proper tree-tie.

Shrub of the Month - February

In flower for the whole of February has been our superb Daphne odora with its clusters of pink and white blooms. 

Daphne odora charming the birds

These scent the back garden - and sometimes the kitchen too when we bring a few sprigs indoors.

It's evergreen and undemanding, keeping a compact shape without much pruning.  Ours has been growing in partial shade for about seven years and is now about 4' tall and wide, flowering reliably on every stem.

(Equally fine for scent and form is Daphne burkwoodii which flowers a bit later in spring.)

This month's blog is dedicated to our good friend Aurelien Hemono
"The Man Who Loved Trees"

Waterworld

Poplars along a flooded stream

Rain has certainly been a feature of this winter so far...!  We thought it was bad in December but the second half of January has seen an endless scattering of showers and much more prolonged rain, with occasional heavy cloudbursts of hail.  It's not a good idea to work on saturated ground, even though weeds continue to rampage between the emerging bulbs, and now other plants are coming into leaf thanks to the mild temperatures.

Helleborus niger

Current interest...

A joyfully reliable perennial at this time of year is the Christmas Rose, which has seeded itself in damper parts of the garden and produces flowers in various mottled shades of pink and cream - with just a hint of green.  

Using a digital camera with a flexible viewfinder is a great way to enjoy these rather downward-facing blooms which are otherwise awkward to photograph.

We have a large spread of hellebores in a shady area under the barn wall where the lack of guttering means they get battered by rain running off the roof.  Being such robust creatures, they rarely suffer from more than the odd splash of mud - and even that can be avoided if you spread some bark mulch around them.  (Nor do they seem to mind if you remove the largest leaves once they start to go brown.)

Occasional spells of warm sunshine have brought out some crocus in the south-facing garden, encouraging them to open their petals and bask in the strong light.  They provide a splash of gold in an area where the yellow winter jasmine held sway for several weeks but has now faded and mostly dropped its starry little florets.

Bringing the outside in

Something else which has bloomed for weeks now is the window trough containing three cyclamens.  The dark pink one on the far left (not shown here) has only just come into flower, so that should keep the display going for a while longer. 

I have to say these plants seem to do much better in the open air, where they can be admired on the other side of the sitting room window, with wooden shutters closed over them at night to offer a bit of protection against cold showers.  They get watered about once a week and are mulched with gravel to stop their lower leaves and stems from rotting - a problem which seems to occur more readily when they are kept indoors.

Hippeastrum hybrida

On the other hand, if you want an exciting plant for the living room - one to amaze and amuse you over the festive season - then look no further than the Hippeastrum from South America (more commonly sold as 'Amaryllis' in a department store near you).

They are so statuesque with their in-your-face trumpets and with stems so rigid they could almost be forged from steel... fabulous to photograph in all stages of development.

These days you may get more than one stem from each bulb and the flowers last for a couple of weeks, making them really good value.  It's not worth trying to keep the bulb for another year, so just start again with a different colour (they're all fab!) and, unlike lilies, they're not heavily scented and won't drop pollen over your furniture

For something more traditional, and with a scent which really can fill your room, plant up some hyacinths a few weeks before Christmas. 

I don't know if it's just my imagination but the blue-flowered ones seem to be more pungent than the others.  We usually let the foliage die down naturally in a dry corner of the shed before re-planting them in the garden.

Again, I'm not sure if I'm 'mis-remembering' which colour I planted in our front border but they have all come back as a deep red-mauve instead of blue, which might have something to do with the soil but, in any event, matches the tulips which often appear at the same time.  A case of serendipity...

Walking across the sodden landscape on a grey day, when there is little to divert your attention from the puddles ahead, I am suddenly transfixed by the sight of silvery, spidery lichens enhancing a hedgerow like forgotten Christmas decorations.

Similarly the mosses, engorged as they are with rain, appear more vividly green than at any other time of the year.  I want to pick some and take it home to make a nest for the indoor hyacinths, but somehow I sense it will never look as natural and fresh as it does outside, clothing the lower branches of a shrub.

Mother Nature knows just how to enliven a dull day with some unexpected piece of country decor!

Being able to photograph these tangled thickets of vegetation in low light, in order to admire them later on a screen, provides a useful exercise in close observation - something you do naturally as a child, when you're nearer the ground and everything seems new and extraordinary, but tend to ignore in later life when you're busy getting from A to B and trying to keep the rain off!

Shrub of the Month - January

Viburnum bodnantense "Dawn"

This viburnum is fairly mature now and attracts its own share of lichen as it's planted in an exposed area on the garden boundary.

It's been covered in blooms all through January and they are sweetly scented, a bit like vanilla.

These viburnums are not particularly fast-growing and don't need much pruning - just a tidy-up now and then - which makes them very easy to look after.  They enjoy chalky soil and will reward you with long-lasting flowers in pink and white clusters.

Fine weather for ducks...

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!

Second Spring

Autumn plant fair at Blaye (Gironde)

After the dryness of high summer, it's a relief to have some rain and the opportunity to move plants into different places.  If she's not rearranging furniture in the sitting room, Christina enjoys nothing more than a good garden makeover - or a 'relooking' as they would term it over here!

Despite producing a quantity of peas and beans earlier in the year, our potager is just too small and shaded to be really successful as a veg plot; so we've decided to concentrate on herbs - those wonderful hyssops and salvias I wrote about last month - retaining a little area for raspberries. 

Christina inclines towards the architectural side of gardening, and is much handier with a spade than me, so she started by digging out a proper gravelled path around the back of our new herb bed.  It cuts down on growing space but makes it much easier to trim the hedge and access all parts of the new bed.

We'd already set aside a number of flowering herbs which would be suitable for this area, but of course we couldn't resist the lure of a local plant fair to find a few more candidates...

There are always some interesting stands at the Autumn foire aux plantes in Blaye, held inside the 17th century citadel overlooking the Gironde estuary, which is like a medieval village within the town, its rough stone and plaster walls providing a backdrop for seductive displays of plants and garden crafts.

The plant-sellers are drawn mainly from neighbouring departments and have become more practised at presentation over the years, ensuring that their specimens are well-labelled and even providing a photograph if there isn't an actual flower on show.  Many of these horticultural enterprises now have informative websites and their plantsmen (and women) are always happy to talk at length to interested buyers - sometimes too happy it seems when you're left awkwardly clutching several pots, ready to hand over your cash whilst a long-winded discussion on soil types continues unabated, seemingly oblivious to impatient clients!

Eragrostis trichoides "Summer Strain"

One of the grasses we chose was a delicate Eragrostis which has now taken its place next to the stone bird bath, a central feature of our new herb bed.  When the early-morning sun shines through its seed heads, these elegant wands almost look like fine sprays of glittering water.

Another grass which catches the light beautifully is Pennisetum alopecuroides, or Chinese Fountain Grass, which is increasingly used to good effect in municipal flowerbeds and seems to come in varying shades of purple and brown.

Pennisetum alopecuroides "National Arboretum"

Much as I like to see the garden filled to overflowing with greenery, it's worth being brave and cutting back a lot of extraneous foliage on hardy geraniums; most of them have finished flowering by now and very few of ours produce any autumn tints before their leaves shrivel and go brown.

After clearing away this tide of green, we can take the opportunity to turn the soil, add some home-made compost or leafmould, and tidy up the beds by re-defining their edges.  Suddenly everything  looks much sharper and the dazzling autumnal light really picks out those grasses.

Bright candy-pink sedums and deep blue plumbago flowers continue to dominate our borders; but as the sun sinks lower in the sky, there are more areas remaining in shade for much of the day and it's important to try and light up these darker corners.

This is where plants with variegated leaves come into their own, together with the berries of shrubs such as pyracantha - we have three varieities currently showcasing their berries: in scarlet, orange and yellow.  Birds love them and they will probably all be devoured by Christmas.

Sternbergia lutea with Pyracanthus and Eleagnus pungens 'Maculata'

Despite intimations of autumn, the garden does feel quite springlike in this moist but warm season, and it never fails to surprise us when bulbs like Sternbergia suddenly burst forth.  Dormant for much of the year, their yellow crocus flowers light up the dry soil under trees and hedges; they quickly multiply and produce a great deal of glossy foliage - which is why they're probably better kept in out-of-the-way places!

Shrub of the Month - I would definitely nominate our Caryopteris clandonensis variegata (right) which has been in flower for most of September and is a magnet for bees.  I took some seeds from this plant last year and grew three plants - two of them had plain green leaves and are flowering well, but the third one just has yellowish leaves and not a single flower.

Which probably goes to prove that I know nothing at all about Botany!!

But we do know how to keep our insects happy and have another 'nectar bar' in the mini-forest of Verbena bonariensis, which grows happily in the chalky base of our driveway.  One late afternoon I counted four types of butterflies and one moth feasting on the bushy flowers, which are still going strong after eight weeks.

Brown Argus

Hummingbird Hawkmoth