April
The garden survived the winter fairly well, as the first group of photos, taken on the day after our arrival, show. There was one slight disaster however. We had planted several hundred dark purple alliums and a thousand tulip bulbs in two varieties….one mainly white with some purple flecks, and one double purple, which we hoped would give us an impressive display through late April and early May. Unfortunately as the tulips opened they turned out to be bright red and a horribly sludgy purple – with a few stray orangey brown ones thrown in for good measure. Not a great visual success, and since we can’t dig them all up it’s one that might be with us for a while!
Also experimented with waterlilies again. Previous attempts had been uprooted by the fish so Edward hit on the idea of planting them in deep plastic containers, covered in gravel and chicken wire to stop the fish grubbing them up. We bought four – red, pink, white and yellow but when they flowered later in the summer all four turned out to be white!
May
There had been no rain since February so the grass was beginning to suffer badly, but the large garden beds had been heavily mulched and this made a huge difference, keeping the soil damp and most of the plants quite happy. It was also unusually warm – more like August – and this encouraged normally late appearing plants like dahlias to start in growth much earlier than usual.
June & July
Still no rain…. but good weather for continuing to rebuild the wall. July brought the first proper rain since February. Nevertheless the garden was looking good. We had 24 tons of wood mulch delivered to lay out on newly planted, or about to be planted areas of the garden.
August
It took us a long time to decide what to do about the big barn and its dilapidated roof. But given that we couldn’t afford to replace it, or even repair it properly nor could we risk leaving it in a dangerous state while it slowly but inevitably collapsed, we had it taken down. Gilles and Julien the roofers estimated two days work but in fact the demolition was over and done with in two hours and the worst of the mess cleared up within an afternoon. It has opened up a whole range of gardening possibilities for the future…. watch this space – literally!
Edward also began to build a large raised bed for small bulbs and some alpines. Pleased with his success he then started on building an iris bed. All these groups of plants usually require very sharp drainage to prevent them them rotting in wet winter conditions, and we hope it will also be easier to stop them being swamped by larger plants and weeds.
September
Edward’s enthusiasm for wallbuilding – or his determination to use up all the stone in the rock pile -seems to know no limits! He has started a new wall separating the the parking area from the driveway, and we are also planning a staircase from the entrance area up to the upper part of the garden. This will allow us not only to treat the whole of the remaining entrance area as one, but also unite the two parts of the garden more effectively.
October
Planted the new grass garden…
December
A final trip back to Le Domaine to plant yet more trees, complete the hedging, start sorting out the begetable garden and generally tidy up. The weather was remarkably mild and meant that there was a lot of unseasonal plants in flower as well as a huge range of funghi. The grass garden and the bulb & iris beds that Edward built over the summer were all looking good.
Le Domaine 