jardin aux fleurs

Before we came  to live in France my mother did her best to dissuade us from moving. Often she would point out how much I would miss my garden in England, my reply was  " I have another garden in me".

It's getting to be a reality !

When a French person tells you they do gardening they mean they grow vegetables, their jardin is the potager, sometimes they will add that they grow some roses too. A garden of shrubs and flowers is referred to as a "jardin Anglais". I need it all - must be because I'm an Anglaise!

On our first Christmas here we met  Catherine Smedley, an artist and keen gardener who has, behind her gallery, one of the prettiest gardens in the area. She gave me a christmas present of some packets of annual flower seeds she had saved. I converted an area of my new garden to become a flower garden and it still features annuals grown from seeds collected from the offspring of those first seeds.

work in progress

the area when we moved in

the wooden path

The first year the flower garden was a refuge from the devastation
caused by installing the pool - hence the mountain in the background

Unfortunately the lovely wooden
path has rotted and had to be
covered with bark this year

Every Spring I grow hundred of seedlings
in the greenhouse and this year was no
exception

There are more perennials and bulbs as well now - just to extend
the season

Now the frosts are behind us and the rain has stopped for a bit I have been busy this week planting out the tiny plants. All finished yesterday - now all I have to do is wait for the sunshine to do the rest.













This little corner of the garden is one of my favourite places - I love it in the early Spring because it's where the garden work/play gets under way and later in the summer the seat catches the last rays of sun in the garden and is a perfect spot to admire the flowers in all their glory against the backdrop of the house and reflecting on "aici sen pla"

June 2014