Le Jardin est ouvert toute l’annee sur rendez-vous et tous les samedis 10h – 17h entre mars et octobre.
Soyez bienvenues sur place pour passer vos commandes ou envoyer nous vos demandes par email. Voir ci-dessous pour quelques idées….
We are taking orders for Spring!
The garden is open by rendezvous all year and every Saturday 10 till 5pm between March and October. Come and see us or send us an email with your requests. See some plant ideas below…
Le Jardin Champêtre a installé une ruche ovoïde en terre cuite grâce a Pierre Carpentier de ‘Cite des Abeilles’.
Le Jardin Champêtre has installed an egg-shaped terracotta beehive with the help of Pierre Carpentier from ‘Cite des Abeilles’.
Pierre nous a apporté – sans aucuns vêtements de protection – un essaim de 5,000 abeilles qu’il a élevé. (Il est un homme qui murmure a l’oreille des abeilles!)
Pierre brought us – without wearing any protective clothing – a swarm of 5,000 bees he has raised himself. (He’s a veritable bee whisperer!)
The Queen Bee arrived in a small yellow plastic box. / La Reine des Abeilles est arrivée en petite boite en plastique.
La ruche est nichée en pleine prairie du Jardin Champêtre. / The beehive is nestled in the meadow area of Le Jardin Champêtre.
La ruche doit être à l’ombre en après-midi. / The beehive has to be in shade in the afternoon.
Bienvenue aux abeilles a notre jardin pour la biodiversité! / Welcome the bees to our wildlife garden!
We started to create a garden for Le Jardin Champêtre in Caunes-Minervois ready for opening the nursery in mid-April 2016.
The first tasks: Planting a double hedge along the boundary, adding trees for structure and shade, including Vitex agnus-castus (Chaste Tree), removing the worst of the weeds – especially those with deep tap roots, and cutting the ‘grass’ for instant tidiness and to minimise self-seeding. There will be a wild zone plus a more landscaped area to demonstrate the plants we will have for sale.
We have kept some of the native flora which will fit in with the wild zone for now, including: the scented and bright yellow flowering Coronilla glauca (Glaucous Scorpion-Vetch), Calamintha nepeta (Lesser Calamint), Asphodelus luteus (Asphodel), Echium vulgare (Viper’s Bugloss), plus the occasional Verbascum. We may live to regret leaving those Verbascum…
Also, as this will be a wildlife garden, we haven’t taken any prunings or weeds to the tip. Instead, the bulk of what we’ve cut back or dug out is in a brash hedge. For compost bays, we’ve started with very simple structures using rusty ‘panneaux de dallage’ from a DIY shop, which is welded reinforcement mesh usually used for concrete. (Imogen used stronger versions of this for trellis at Pensthorpe.) They only just fit in the car when bent in half which has dictated the size of the compost bays!
We were very keen to start planting, of course, and have started with an area for partial shade. The levels are higher around the outside of this border where the most drought-tolerant plants are, and lower in the middle for the thirstier ones. This is a community of ground cover, bulbs, taller perennials and grasses, mainly in yellow, blue, purple and white, and densely planted to minimise weeding and create a natural look using layering.
Under the Pine: before, dug over, and ready to be planted
We invited people to the nursery on Sunday 10th May 2015 to learn about designing borders using Mediterranean plants. 55 people came along on a very hot day to do a tour of the Mediterranean display beds in the nursery’s garden and listen to a talk about our 3 basic designs which you’ll see below. We placed out the 3 designs on the ground, using the plants in their pots, and talked through the plants and why we’d chosen them for their different heights, forms, textures and colours; how to space them differently for instant or longer term effect; and adding additional interest.
All the drawings are by Imogen!
Poster for our designing with mediterranean native plants day
Experimenting with mixing the nursery stock plants
People gathering for talk with Gill Pound on native mediterranean plants
Talk through designs with Kate (English and then French)
Some of the participants asked us to type up a summary of the design talk:
The ‘Low Growing Border’ is a ‘tapis vert’ or ‘couvre sol’ in French, i.e. a carpet of plants or a ground cover. It is a mixture of silver and green foliage using Origanum, Teucrium, Centaurea, Thymus, Artemesia and Achillea species which can knit together. Alternatively, planted further apart with gravel as a mulch, it would show the plants’ individual forms. Flowers provide purple, pink and white. For additional interest, this border can be interplanted with bulbs, smaller grasses and flowering perennials.
The ‘Medium to Large Border’ is an evergreen border for year-round structure. It’s a mixture of larger shrubs Cistus and Phlomis – spaced at least 1m apart, with the smaller Lavenders, Santolinas, Salvias, Hyssops and Helichrysum – mostly planted in 3s and spaced up to 75cm apart. The colour scheme is a base of green and grey with purple, pink, white and pale yellow flowering from Spring to late Autumn. For additional interest, add taller bulbs and flowering perennials.
The ‘Mixed Border’ is full of contrast and interest in height, texture, colour and form. It has a base of evergreen structure with extra blues, silvers, globe-shaped flowers and floating grasses. For additional interest and a longer flowering period, add bulbs and flowering perennials, or for a softer look, add different species of grasses throughout the border.
Hello from Caunes-Minervois where Imogen and I (Kate) have been planting 2 new demonstration areas at the specialist plant nursery, La petite pépinière http://www.lapetitepepiniere.com. 1. The Dry Shade Border In part-shade at the end of Gill’s stunning, long-flowering Salvia border, this area is a cool place to sit in the summer and listen to the birds and the stream running into the Argent Double river.
Before the new borderThe Salvias next to the new border
To start, we cut out a curved shape around the Cedar (Cedrus libani) and under the 2 Flowering Ash trees (Fraxinus ornus), removed the ‘lawn’ (mown weeds) and dug out the couch grass, oxalis and other weeds.
Imogen shaping and digging over the new borderDry- and shade-tolerant plants: some from our gardens in the UK and some from La petite pépinière de Caunes
The following plants – some of which may not cope with the extreme weather here in the Languedoc – were then planted in puddles to keep them as moist as possible while they get established:
Actaea simplex ‘James Compton’
Aster divaricartus
Aster umbellatus
Calamagrostis brachytricha
Danae racemosa
Digitalis ferruginea
Eupatorium ‘Atropurpureum’
Galanthus elwesii
Geranium ‘Biokova’
Geranium ‘Brookside’
Geranium macrorrhizum
Geranium sanguineum ‘Alba’
Helleborus ‘Silver Frost’
Helleborus corsicus
Leucojum aestivum
Liriope muscari ‘Alba’
Molinia ‘Transparent’
Nandina ‘Firepower’
Narcissus ‘Thalia’
Ruscus hypoglossum
Sarcococca confusa
Scilla siberica
Teucrium chamaedrys
Teucrium lucidrys
Viola hederacea
To preserve moisture and minimise weeding, we have covered the border with a deep layer of woodchips made from prunings cut from elsewhere in the garden.
Kate using the shredder to make mulch
We’ll keep you posted on how this border develops… 2. Mixed border for wildlife and people We are using this border to try out new design ideas for Mediterranean gardens. Already in this established demonstration garden is an ornamental grasses bed, a dry Mediterranean native bed, a Salvia bed, as well as different plant collections and tree avenues. This new area is a mixture: grasses and flowering perennials, with bulbs and succulents. We’ve kept the Ceanothus ‘Concha’ bush for height, have raked the soil to create different levels, and have mulched with river sand and stones.
Before: using a hosepipe to mark out the edgeA barrow full of couch grassPlanting in puddles to retain the most moistureRaked soil for different levels
With all the climbing up and down ladders to the river and barrowing the sand and stones, we haven’t finished this border yet! But we’re nearly there and it is being used by Redstarts and Robins already – they sit on the posts and rocks that are marking out the bulbs and smaller specimens at this early stage, and the robins are fighting over the territory. The plan is to attract insects and birds via the plants, using single flowers, different flower head forms, bright colours, high pollen, and leaving the seed heads over winter for food. Using bulbs will extend the flowering season too.
Redstart on post
The plants we’re trialling in this border are: Grasses
Calamagrostis brachytricha
Eragrostis elliottii
Festuca glauca
Miscanthus ‘Dronning Ingrid’
Miscanthus ‘Malepartus’
Molinia ‘Transparent’
Muhlenbergia capillaris
Panicum ‘Rehbraun’
Sesleria nitida
Bulbs
Allium ‘Purple Sensation’
Allium caeruleum
Allium christophii
Allium spaerocephalon
Broadiae ‘Queen Fabiola’
Drimea maritima
Nectaroscordum siculum
Scilla peruviana
Tulipa ‘Little Beauty’
Tulipa turkestanica
Watsonia aletroides
Perennials/shrubs
Coreopsis ‘Cutting Gold’
Dianthus carthusianorum
Echinops tienschanicum
Eryngium ‘Silver Ghost’
Eryngium ebracteanum
Eryngium pandanifolium
Eryngium yuccifolium
Eupatorium ‘Atropurpureum’
Geranium ‘Rambling Robin’
Helichrysum splendidum
Knautia macedonica
Lepechinia hastata
Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’
Salvia ‘Anthony Parker’
Salvia ‘Caradonna’
Salvia scabra
Sedum ‘Black Beauty’
Sedum ‘Citrus Twist’
Sedum ‘El Cid’
Sedum ‘Joyce Henderson’
Sedum ‘Metrona’
Sedum ‘Moonlight Serenade’
Sedum pachyglados
Sedum sieboldii
Drimea maritima and the riversand mulch
We’ll add more plants, e.g. different Agastaches and Echinops, which we’re growing from seed so are too small to plant out at the moment. We’ll post photos of these 2 borders as they develop. You can also see some of our planting combinations at www.facebook.com/jardinchampetre.
Some views of our experimental mixed border May to June…..
Salvia ‘Caradonna’, allium cristophii, Coreopsis ‘Mayfield Giant’
Allium cowanii
Annuals for interest in the first year..Ammi majusAnnual – Orlaya grandifloraAnnual – Nigella ‘Bride’Allium spaerocephalon
The last month has been a whirlwind of travel, gardening and shopping! After three months working in Italy I took a slight detour and headed to Cornwall before coming back to France. Kate and I have decided to settle here for a while and see if we can make a go of gardening in the Minervois. We also hope to start building a garden that reflects some of the ideas and the places that we’ve visited over the last year on our quest to learn more about water-wise gardening. This mixed in with our own style of planting which is usually quite wild, sustainable, natural and colourful, it should keep us occupied for a while!
My mission in Cornwall was to help a friend with a new border, to dig up and divide plants from her garden partly for the new border and partly to bring back to France to see if they can cope with the climate over here (hot, dry summers and cooler,wet winters) Also to collect seeds, bulbs and any other plants that might work here and of course to visit the odd garden for inspiration (and cake)
We love living among the trees here at Hanbury Botanical Gardens. Here are some photos of some of the many Citrus and Acacias, plus an Albizia. We’ve been eating the Citrus, not all of them taste sweet…, and helping the seed laboratory here to collect and clean the Acacia seeds. Happy Days!
Botanical walks in the Citrus Groves. Beware the mosquitoes, the large cobwebs and the sticky white fluff which are pests called Metcalfa pruinosa (Citrus Flatid Planthopper!).
My favourite Citrus trees are in this collage: the horn-shaped Bitter Orange and the heady scented Kaffir Lime.
I’ve heard that some of the labels on the Citrus trees are wrong. Let me know if you know!
The velvety Acacia x hanburyana (Sir Thomas Hanbury’s Mimosa) and Acacia podalyriifolia (Queensland Silver Wattle), with the gorgeous white puff ball flowers of Albizia amara.
The 2 huge trees of the yellow-flowered Acacia karroo, formerly known as A. horrida, with the long and curly seedpods of A. julifera and the box of beautiful A. cyclops (Coastal Wattle) seeds on display in the Hanbury Botanical Gardens’ seed laboratory.
This our first blog from our 3 month stay at the Hanbury Gardens on the French/Italian Coastal border
The long hot route from Norfolk to Italy!
Now a little walk down through the garden to see some of the wonders of Hanbury and some of the work we have done so far..
Above the entrance to Hanbury is the Chinese symbol for ‘Happiness’View down through the garden to the Palazzo
The Succulent and Palm sectionScented plant walkway leading up to the Palazzo TerraceA very spiky job on a very hot day! Renovating an old succulent bed on the Palazzo TerraceThe plants don’t mind being baked in the sun whilst waiting to be replantedA window onto the romantic wilderness of the large summer rosesEchiums looking stunning in May
Sunbathing residents of the garden
Fabulous garden for creature watching. Cricket laying eggs in one of the historic wallsErigeron karvinskianus (Mexican Fleabane)Romneya coulteri (Californian Tree Poppy)Acacia x hanburyana
View back up through the garden from The MeadowAcca sellowiana (Pineapple Guava or Feijoada) These striking flowers should turn into delicious little fruits later in the year although the buds are proving popular with the BlackbirdsHibiscus ‘Fireball’ (Swamp Mallow)At the bottom of the garden this building houses an old olive press from the original garden
The biggest job for us so far is to renovate the Salvia borders at the bottom of the garden. They form a well established collection of Salvias from around the world grown on the terraces of the former kitchen gardenKate drawing out a plan of the bedsImogen adding compost to help the new Salvias, the soil is one of the hardest we’ve worked with so far, it has to be chiseled away with a small mattock!Salvia lanceolata.Salvia viscosaSalvia pomiferaSalvia leucophyllaSalvia semiatrataSalvia canariensisSalvia scabraSalvia chamaedryoides
From the Salvia terraces down to the sea, unfortunately not accessible from the gardens but gives you an idea of the setting.
View from the beach at the bottom of the garden towards Menton (France)Some of the local sea creatures. So far we have spotted Hermit Crabs, Anemones, red Starfish and an Octopus!
Well that’s the first six weeks of our stay, it’s probably going to get a lot hotter and the flowers even brighter for the next six.
This is a short post from Kate that has nothing to do with gardening, except that gardening has taken us along the south of France for 12 months, and I took these photos of old shops, fonts and door knockers along the way!
I particularly like the round caravan on the sign for the Les Ormes campsiteStone fonts
From left to right. I’ve taken many photos of outdoor laundry pools, ‘lavoirs’, and communal bathhouses, the latter being one of my favourite things about life in Japan.The only bathhouse we’ve seen that is still in use is for the homeless, next to the Montpellier botanical garden. The cinema in the above collage is now used for tai ji. The Pont du Gard is engraved by craftsmen who used it to advertise their name and tools. The tall stone is a road sign indicating the way to St. Hippolyte du Fort. The bridge is in here in memory of Suzanne Robinson, and the brick, like many old bricks and roof tiles, is engraved with the details of the company that manufactured it.
Coiffures and Mongay Boutique for chaps
Hairdressers have all the best fonts…
Shop fonts
Most of these lovely shops are still trading although we’ve seen quite a few converted into houses with the signs restored.
Door knockers of France
And possibly my favourite thing to photograph, door knockers of animals, women’s hands and lovely shapes. The town of Auch had the best ones by far.
And to sign off, some terrible showing off with my name in font!
Kate’s name on the panels at Brackenhurst, Nottingham Trent University
