Exotic Fruit

"Fruits are like flowers - they speak to us

in provocative language and teach us things that

are hidden" - Frida Kahlo

Horses in a field of marsh mallows

Heavy rain at the tail end of August has left us with greener grass and a host of new weeds!

 

Althaea officinalis

Some, like this grey-leaved mallow which thrives on the marsh, produce attractive flowers similar to lavatera and make you feel as if a second spring has come into bloom.

My book tells me that the roots of this plant were once used to make confectionery, hence the concept of 'marshmallows'... but I don't think we'll be digging up any to try out the recipe. (It's enough that I've just macerated the rest of our basil to make pesto sauce!)

Cherry plums being de-stoned for storing

We soon learned that it's vital to have a decent-sized freezer here in order to cope with nature's generous offerings.

A nearby plum tree, which doesn't seem to belong to anyone, produces quantities of fruit every July - perfect for freezing and using in tarts or crumbles over winter.

With the addition of some star anise, these plums really do taste like sharp cherries and are well worth picking and de-stoning.

The wild tree is also known as Myrobalan plum (Prunus cerasifera) and is one of the first to flower in spring, often starting in mid-February in Europe. Several cultivars have been developed for the garden, including  'Atropurpurea' which has dark foliage and produces purple plums.

White figs

Another favourite for scrumping are the various types of fig which grow locally. We mainly come across brown or black figs which weigh down the branches of garden trees and can make a horrid mess underfoot. 

It's impossible to pick them all and your appetite is usually sated after a couple of weeks of full-on figs. Initially, there's a deep sensual pleasure in plucking a warm, ripe fruit from the branch and tasting its toffee-like interior. So, really, who needs manufactured confectionery??

White figs, on the other hand, seem to have a more bready texture and remind me of eating a jam doughnut. We almost walked past the ones in the picture, thinking they were green and unripe; but Christina noticed that birds had already pecked open a few, revealing sugary pink interiors, and of course we just had to investigate further...

Punica granatum - Pomegranate tree

Pomegranates are also popular in Mediterranean areas and these shrubs or trees produce attractive crimson flowers in spring.

I'm told this is an easy plant to care for and its plump, juicy seeds are highly nutritious, sprinkled over fruit salads and green salads alike. In addition to being packed full of vitamins and antioxidants, the fruit is high in fibre - if we had more sunny spaces in our garden, I'd definitely plant one!

Cydonia oblonga - Quince

Quince is another of those trees which I might consider as part of an orchard but wouldn't want in an ornamental garden.

They don't grow particularly tall but the branches are mis-shapen and pulled down low by its heavy pearlike fruits. Even worse are its leaves which soon blotch and curl, making the tree look even more diseased and deformed.

Quince - providing a perfect still life

However, there is something undeniably beautiful about these fruits, especially when presented on a rustic French plate...

Don't be fooled into thinking they can be eaten raw like the pears they resemble. According to chefs writing on the net, they can be cooked in a variety of ways to soften the hard flesh, turning it pink in colour and releasing the subtle flavours.

Traditionally these fruits have been used to make jelly, as an accompaniment to cheese.

White grapes ripening early

Grapes here are generally grown for making wine or cognac, and for a fortified wine known as 'Pineau' which tastes like a mild port.

Although grapes are mainly white in our area, we also have some red varieties used for Charentais wine. This year's wet spring followed by some very hot days in summer mean grapes have ripened quickly and may be harvested in late September, rather than the usual time of early October.

Unless something drastic occurs, it looks like the Charentais and Bordeaux regions are on course for an excellent vintage - and plenty of it too!

Lagerstroemia indica (Crape Myrtle)
- growing unpruned in our village

Exotic Flowers

Late summer sees some of the more Mediterranean trees and shrubs come into bloom.

One of the most eye-catching of these is Crape Myrtle or Indian Lilac, a neat multi-stemmed deciduous tree that can grow up to six meters tall.

The flowers can be white or pink, mauve, purple or carmine - all giving a spectacular display at this time of year when some trees are already starting to lose their leaves.

Nerium oleander

Oleaders have been in bloom for a couple of months now and their spiky evergreen foliage also lends a touch of the tropics to village gardens around here.

We passed a rather sophisticated town house the other day which had nothing but white-flowering oleanders in its front garden: the muted effect was decidedly classy and would be perfect for someone who wanted an easy,  low-maintenance garden. C'est raffiné!

Hibiscus syriacus

In our front garden we inherited a triple-bush of hardy hibiscus, consisting of three different coloured flowers - two types of pink and one of blue. It's been in bloom for over a month now and each flower lasts but a day or two, meaning that it drops an awful lot of shrivelled detritus on the grass around it.

But, apart from that minor irritation, it does give great value in terms of colour and grows happily in a dry and sunny position.

The elegant blue hibiscus

Christina's handiwork with spent lavender

Aaah, even horses love selfies...!

Contrasts

"No subject is more beset with rules and taboos in

gardening than the use of colour" - Christopher Lloyd

Helenium autumnale

Late summer's mix of hot colours can bring about some interesting contrasts, not to mention outright clashes... 

Salvia greggii putting rudbeckias in the shade

Here in France people seem to love all shades of pink and it's not unusual to find municipal plantings where gaudy pinks shriek alongside bright yellows and oranges: Quelle horreur!

Christopher Lloyd probably would have approved, since he encouraged a daring mix of colour and shape in borders.

If anything, we found his garden at Great Dixter a little too over-stimulating on a boiling May afternoon some years ago. Whilst you can certainly get away with using lots of hot colour in the bright light of this southern climate, a garden also needs quieter passages of cool blue and white to soothe the eye.

Dried flowers of Catanache with
Geranium 'Azure Rush'

Geraniums are indispensible for filling up spare patches and they provide a soft edge to borders, being easy to cut back if they look like getting out of hand.

Every year we are tempted into buying yet another geranium to add to the collection and I've sadly lost track of many names and varieties, although we do make more effort to keep labels these days.

So I know for sure that two of the most prolifically flowering plants in our garden are 'Rozanne' (mauve) and 'Azure Rush', which is seen here. They will be worth dividing in early spring so that we can pop off-shoots into other semi-shaded corners.

A cool and airy shrub

Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora

Something else we were tempted into buying again was Hydrangea paniculata, after enjoying several floriferous years with the variety 'grandiflora' (above), which really is the grand-daddy of them all.

Along the same high barn wall, in semi-shade, we planted one called 'Early Sensation' whose white florets quickly become blotted with pink; and another called 'Limelight' with denser, cone-shaped blooms which have a distinctly greenish hue.

This summer all three came into flower at more or less the same time and really stand out against the stone wall. Whenever there's a storm, they benefit from heavy rain which pours onto them from the barn roof - alas our expensive guttering didn't extend that far, but luckily hydrangeas and ferns don't appear to mind!

Anenome hupehensis var. japonica
- possibly "Bressingham Glow'

Another plant which seemingly enjoys the odd downpour but otherwise survives in quite a dry, shady area is the Japanese Anenome.

They're well-suited to a woodland setting but can become invasive and we spent ages removing the spreading shoots of a pink type which had got mixed in with our beautiful white 'Honorine Jobert'.

However, we love the one on the right here which was obtained from a friend and stays within the confines of a buried pot. It looks similar to pictures I've seen of 'Bressingham Glow' but there do seem to be a range of stunning pinks on offer so I'm not entirely sure...

Complementary Colours

Physocarpus opulifolius with Rudbeckia

As well as imposing some contrast between plants, the shrub form of Sambucus nigra can echo certain hues of red, brown and purple.

It's a useful foil for many flowers but we had trouble finding one in a garden centre last year, finally settling on a stunted, unhappy bush called Physocarpus opulifolius which looked similar and was in the reject pile!

Physocarpus opulifolius

or Purple-leaved Eastern ninebark,
contrasting with Echinacea purpurea

Fortunately our nurturing has paid off and the sad little shrub grew steadily throughout spring, rewarding us with fabulous leaves and stems which really glow in early morning and evening light.

Cosmos sulphureus 'Polidor' mixed

Not so lucky were some of the Cosmos seedlings I planted out a couple of weeks ago to fill our gaps...!

It rained, and of course the snails came out in force to eat anything which looked particularly desirable. Like this sweet little bi-coloured flower from the Polidor range, grown from the Chiltern Seeds selection which I always recommend for their reliability.

I tend to grow 'extras' for insurance, so we still have several plants to mix in with the 'hot' colours of Rudbeckia and Helenium.

Lunch for two in the garden

Summer wouldn't be summer without moules marinieres...!

Butterflies by the Estuary

We came across a host of these exquisite butterflies whilst walking along the cliff edge on a hot sunny day.

I think they're nothing more exciting than the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) but - as with geraniums - I have trouble telling all the various blues apart!

They have different colours and markings on the undersides of their wings, just to add to the confusion, and of course the males will be somehow distinguishable from the females. It's a real challenge to capture them on camera when they're busy flitting from sea holly to thistle, but here are two of my favourite pictures... of possibly the same butterfly.

A slightly ragged blue butterfly!

Profusion

"Going halfway, half-heartedly, will give less than

a quarter of the satisfaction"

- gardendigest.com

There are several reasons why we started growing perennials from seed instead of relying on local garden centres and the occasional horticultural event. 

Agastache mexicana 'Sangria'
Mexican hyssop

First and foremost, it's a way of finding new and unusual specimens, or variations on a plant which you've already used successfully in the past. For instance, I didn't know much about the herb hyssop - Agastche - until I read the colourful descriptions in Chiltern Seeds catalogue and realised there were at least fifteen varieties!

Having planted a couple of South American salvias which did well in this climate, we figured that exotic hyssops were definitely worth a try.  If anything, they're even more prolific and long-flowering than salvias and their tubular flowers are magnets for the nectar-thirsty hummingbird hawkmoth.

Beauty on a Budget

Rudbeckia ordinaire or Black Eyed Susan

Secondly, of course, it's relatively cheap to buy a packet of seeds and produce a dozen plants which can put on a spectacular show of colour within a few weeks. This is especially useful now when you need vivid splashes of Cosmos or Rudbeckia to fill gaps left by plants which have gone over.

We find garden centres here mainly stock the ordinary yellow rudbeckias, whereas we wanted something with a bit more 'oomph' that would really stand out from the crowd.

Rudbeckia hirta 'Autumn Forest'

Enter the wonderful Rudbeckia hirta strains offered by Chiltern Seeds in a range of rich yellows, reds and mahogany. We started with 'Prairie Sun', a fetching mix of yellow and green, and have recently tried some of the more autumnal colours which are in bloom now.

They're all characterised by a raised central boss which makes an interesting feature on its own, never mind those arresting bi-coloured petals.  The chocolate centre on this one has risen so beautifully that it could almost be a contender for Bake-Off... "a truffle fondant decorated with dark chocolate shavings and topped with a golden couronne".  Yum!

A cheerful medley of late Summer colour, including
red spots of Geum chiloense 'Mrs Bradshaw'

A third reason to raise stock from seed lies in the fact that many plants do better when acclimatised to your garden conditions from an early age, i.e. before they grow big and thirsty, which is how garden centres tend to sell them here.

We plant out most of our seedlings from 6cm or 7cm pots once they've established a firm root system, adding a bit of blood, fish and bonemeal to the soil if they're perennials.  (In France they sell 'hoof and horn' which presumably assists root development in the same way.)

Nicotiana alata 'Lime Green'
with emerging Sedum spectabile

I really enjoy the process of pricking out and potting up seedlings and have learned from experience that it's worth paying more for good quality compost - rather than run the risk of weak, straggly growth which might just put you off trying again.

A successful group of plants lined up on the potting table makes me feel like a proud parent - whereas I'm happy to give some away, Christina often wants to keep the whole lot and make a really big display!  (Greedy or what??)

Lasting Value

Oregano in bloom, along with
Dianthus gratianopolitanus

Some plants have more to give than others in terms of repeat flowering or a long-flowering period.

This summer we noticed that our Cheddar Pinks, planted in almost pure chalk, never really stopped flowering after the first blooms appeared in June. Pinks are happiest in full sun and seem to like growing here against the stone blocks of our herb bed.

We've also enjoyed a succession of flowers from Galega officinalis, which we've just cut down to give it a rest (and to access the shutters that needed repainting!) as well as Geum chiloense 'Mrs Bradshaw', who bloomed well in early summer and has continued to draw the eye with little dots of scarlet across our rear border.

Scarborough Fair -  still going!

Amongst the roses which come back well for a second flush is David Austin's yellow climber 'The Pilgrim' and my old favourite 'Scarborough Fair', seen here. (The latter makes a very pretty match with Sedum spectabile which is coming into bloom.)

Although the actual rose flowers may be smaller second time around, they're no less abundant and are fine for picking.

Among interesting plants I'd recommend Catanache caerulea because its mauve flowers morph into papery seed-heads and Lysimachia purpurea 'Beaujolais', whose maroon flower-spikes gradually turn into extremely spiky seeds!

Rosa 'No-name'

Way back in January, when there was very little to write about, I remarked on some local roses which were still blooming bravely... and I took three cuttings of a climber I particularly admired down at the port.

Out of those, one cutting actually survived - much to my surprise - and has now given us its first flower! I've yet to find out its name but am intrigued to see whether it will manage to produce a new bloom each month.

Once again, our acer has put on an early flush of red leaves, having decided that autumn is around the corner. 

It's starting to encroach on my work bench and will need transferring to a bigger pot this winter unless we can find a space to plant it out somewhere.

With a small garden, we're always being faced with these difficult decisions - and this tree has probably doubled in size over the past year.

'His Maj' enjoying an early-evening doze
next to a patch of perennial plumbago

Mellow Yellows

"The cure for anything is salt water:

sweat, tears, or the sea" - Isak Dinesen

Gironde Estuary at Barzan Plage -
where ancient Romans came for mud baths!

Whilst salt is a necessity for us humans, it's anathema to most plants. There are gaps in some of the sunflower fields near our house where water from the estuary has encroached in past years.

A mutant thumbing his nose at tourists..?

But on the whole sunflowers - or tournesols - do pretty well around here, providing a welcoming army of smiling faces for arriving tourists, as well as producing the excellent local sunflower oil.

Varieties seem to have shorter stems these days, so there's less wastage at harvest time; even so, these brown and black rustling plants give off great clouds of dust when they're finally cut down in October.

That, and the grape harvest, will be a signal that summer is truly over.

Courtyard seating areas

Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy hot sunny days followed by cool nights, which is the perfect recipe for a good night's sleep and helps to revive our sometimes flagging plants.

Despite high temperatures, we've taken the risk of planting out some of my newly-raised Sweet Williams (aka 'Sooty') so that they can fill the gaps left by larkspur and other annuals.

Lavender, Echinacea and Salvia
turkestanica alba - in full flourish

One can't help panicking when big spaces appear and there isn't an appropriate 'filler' to hand!

Cosmos is indispensible at this stage and luckily some of last year's seeds have begun to sprout in the borders. Given a bit of water, they are easily lifted and transplanted into new spots.

For insurance, I also sowed a small tray of Cosmos sulphurea, which came up straight away and will be ready to plant in ten days.

Crocosmia 'Emily McKenzie'
starting to emerge

After all the pinks and mauves of echinacea and lavender which dominated the first half of July, the hotter shades of late summer are beginning to take centre stage.

With rudbeckias and heleniums now in full flower, the colour of the moment is yellow - and various shades thereof - going through orange into red.

This is epitomised by the swordlike shafts of crocosmia which have gradually come into bloom, starting out rather snakelike (as here on the left) and finally throwing back their heads in a full-throated display of hot colour.

Emily cooling off in a sudden shower

We planted this vibrant crocosmia in our semi-shaded border, next to the dark leaves of Actaea simplex atropurpurea. Captured in a strong evening light, 'Emily McKenzie' glows almost scarlet against the backdrop of deep purple foliage. A really dramatic plant - smaller and more delicate than the popular 'Lucifer'.

Echinacea purpurea

Echinaceas are still a mainstay in the border, attaining a height of almost 2m - due in no small part to Christina's excellent watering system!

I love them in their emergent phase, as shown here; but once again their colours intensify as the flowers mature and they too look wonderful in the glow of late afternoon and evening.

We now have them in shades of pink, green and cream - any of which are useful for cutting.

Yellow Rudbeckia hirta, with white Shasta
Daisy, blue Scabious, orange Cosmos and
Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'

All the flowers shown here last for a week or more in water, with the exception of Cosmos sulphurea which tends to droop after a couple of days.

Lavender blooms are starting to go to seed, save for those we cut back in June which now have small young flowers. Instead we can pick a few stems of dark flowering salvia, like Salvia guarantiaca 'Black and Blue', which has finally got going after a slow start and provides bold contrast to all those orangey yellows.

Nicotiana 'Lime Green'
underplanted with lobelia 

Every year we promise ourselves to drastically reduce the number of pots we have to water... it seems such a waste of time and compost. But quite often we succumb to an impulse-buy of some colourful annual, only to find we have nothing to use for edging around a pot.

For me, lobelia has always been a perfect accessory, especially the Cambridge Blue trailing variety which is impossible to buy later in the season. So this year, I ordered seeds from Chiltern Seeds in the UK and started growing them in my trusty cold-frame back in April.

Being such tiny seeds, they tend to clump together and, when they finally came up, the threadlike seedlings were pretty impossible to prise apart without causing damage... yes, I should have mixed them with sand before sowing! Hence I had to prick them out and plant them up in clumps, which is not ideal for the development of their roots.

Lobelia erinus pendula 'Blue Fountain'

That said, most of the plants survived well and have been blooming away in three different containers; the green tobacco plant above was a spare seedling which we couldn't bear to throw away and it's turned into a handsome pot plant.

The lobelia itself seems to do best in semi shade where its blue flowers are two-toned and look lovely with grey leaved plants such as lavender. I'm hoping it will seed itself around the courtyard and provide us with easy-grow plants next year!

Verbascum nigrum

 Yellow natives

On a recent stroll around the site of a Roman amphitheatre which is being excavated locally, we walked through a meadow of lemon yellow mullein which was alive with buzzing insects. This is a shorter, more dainty version of the statuesque mullein, Verbascum densiflorum, which can reach to 4m on chalky banks and has grey-green foliage like the garden variety.

Tetragonolobus maritimus

In the same area of scrubby limestone soil, we came across these soft pillows of yellow vetch - a wild flower which goes by the surprising name of Dragon's-teeth, due to the long seed pods which eventually form.

It's a salt-tolerant plant and may well have existed there since Roman times when the supposed port of Novioregum would have been much closer to the shore.

An estuary vineyard, unfazed by salt-laden winds

Good Companions

"Collecting ripe seeds and growing plants from them

is one of the great joys for gardeners."

- Christopher Lloyd

Dianthus superbus and Stipa tenuissima

In hot summers it's vital to have some light and airy plants to give the impression of a draught wafting through your garden... even if it's only the mildest of breezes!

The popular Mexican grass, Stipa tenuissima, took hold in our courtyard some years ago and we liked it so much we've just let it flourish.

Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink'
- from Chiltern Seeds

It seeds itself happily in the chalk base of our gravel courtyard and just needs a comb every once in a while to draw out the dead 'hairs' which tend to get matted after rainfall.

Then, voila, it looks like the finest of blond tresses after a rainwater rinse!

Now we've found a similarly tall, wavy companion flower called Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink', which I grew from seed last year. It must have taken about twelve months to start flowering and patience was wearing thin as some of the grass-like specimens in our raised bed started to look very dry and frazzled.

Dianthus superbus and
Veronica spicata 

But, finally, it has rewarded us with a positive exuberance of flowers - delicate and fringed, ever so slightly scented and good for cutting. As light levels decrease in the evening, its finely cut petals glow beautifully against the dark shadow of our little garden house behind.

We also grew some of these in a shadier border under the ash tree and foliage has stayed a better, deeper green. The flowers are just as good, having come a little later but lasting for longer in the relative cool.

When my cousin came to stay recently we took her to one of our local beaches where there are carpets of wild pinks flourishing in sandy soil beneath the pine trees. She noticed that some had already formed ripe seed capsules, so we took a few just to see if we can grow them in the garden.

Wild pinks by the beach

I have to agree with Christopher Lloyd that raising your own plants from seed is hugely satisfying.

Pinks are amongst the easiest to grow, provided you use seed when it's fully dry and ripe, scattering it over sandy or gritty soil in a warm site. They need very little in the way of watering - in fact putting them into humid compost is probably the worst thing you can do for successful germination.

In England I was told that mixing a bit of brick rubble and mortar into your soil would make a good cuttings medium for pinks... Over here we just add some of the chalky bits that accumulate down our back lane.  Another way of using what Nature has so generously provided for free!

Scabious caucasica 'Fama Blue' with
Marbled White butterfly

Recent hot weather has encouraged lots of butterflies to visit the garden, especially when we've used the watering system and they can have a drink at the same time as collecting nectar.  It seems the large blooms on these scabious are popular with most winged insects and a single flower can host two or three visitors at the same time.

Tree poppy or Romneya coulteri

One of Christina's favourite plants, also grown from seed, is the flouncy tree poppy or Romneya. It sits well amongst a border of tall echinacea, coming into flower now.

The RHS classifies Romneya as a "suckering sub shrub" (not easy to say after a glass or two!) but gives it their seal of approval for the garden. It grows to about 2m, with tough but attractive grey-green foliage which enables the plant to thrive in hot climates and be fairly drought resistant. 

Romneya in full flounce

I find many types of poppy difficult to raise from seed because they don't like being pricked out from a tray to a pot and are better  grown in situ where they are to flower... which can be awkward in a small garden, with space at a premium and weeds liable to overtake seedlings at any moment.

So, Romneya is ideal in that respect: easily grown from seed and happy to be transferred from tray to pot.

Nerium oleander

Another Mediterranean-type plant which is popular here is the oleander.  It does particularly well in town gardens where it's more protected from frost and harsh winds and, so far, we've resisted the impulse to try and plant one on our own wind-battered site.

They are, however, sold quite cheaply in pots at the start of the season and do make a handsome container plant which doesn't need too much water.

We chose two different pink varieties and the paler one has come out well before the other for some reason.  No matter, they will provide a couple of nice punctuation marks on either side of the driveway.

Here you can see it next to the lavender border which is in its second summer.

The lavender plants have grown quite large and now need to be kept tightly trimmed... we experimented by cutting back every other plant just as it was about to flower.  

This had the effect of delaying flowering and it's noticeable that new blooms are smaller and shorter than the first growth, which is somewhat lax and inclined to flop over our black edging. For the sake of neatness and uniformity, we may decide to give them all a June-prune in future.

Cotinus coggigrya or Smoke Bush

Shrubs like smoke bush put on a huge amount of growth in midsummer and we suddenly noticed that ours is about 4m tall, with lots of dark leaves which almost burn with colour in the evening light.

Raised bed with Achillea 'Terracotta'
and Catanche caerulea in foreground

By contrast, our new raised bed falls into shade by late afternoon, so the pale blues and whites really stand out.

We looked for a long time to find the achillea called 'Terracotta' because its lovely apricot hue complements anything with a bit of mauve in it. Hence we planted it close to a small catanache, which is slightly lilac in tone, and to Veronica spicata which is a darker mauve.

Playing with colour gives you an almost Monet-like ability to turn your garden into a canvas, with constantly moving light providing some deft brushwork which can be caught on camera and creatively manipulated for hours in Photoshop. 

But, contrary to appearances, the following shot really hasn't been cloned!

Young storks in a freshly mown hay meadow