October 2nd, 2025

Greetings from New Zealand

Hello Gardening Friends

Now in our tenth year, things are coming together for the garden and the gardener. There have, of course been interludes of visitors, travelling to other regions, heatwaves and Covid.

We live on a corner section surrounded on two sides by three-metre-high stone walls. I inherited a garden with some lawn, an odd collection of azaleas, roses and shrubs that were clearly struggling, and many small stone walls and rills which I couldn’t get my head around.

After realising that the ‘soil’ was actually a sandy mix of large stones and a bit of impoverished soil, and that ‘rainy Normandy’, which has in the past had moderate summers, was now having at least two heat waves each summer, my thinking started to change.

A few years ago I decided that the easiest thing for me to do was to clear the site.

When we bought the house I considered the existing garden and knew that it was a suitable size to maintain, knowing that we wouldn’t be here for much of the year. I thought that the maintenance would be simple, with some light pruning, but there was a small lawn which would need mowing. The garden wasn’t a huge consideration when we bought as I thought it wouldn’t be so important; my concentration being more on other aspects of life in France. The house ticked all of the boxes and more, and so the purchase was made.

One of the things that I didn’t know was that we would be having at least two heatwaves each summer, with temperatures going as high as 43°. We live in Normandy, a region in the north which has traditionally had a climate similar to England’s; lots of rain and moderate temperatures. I also realised that when the property was actually mine, I couldn’t leave the garden as it was. I had to love the plants as I do at Frensham.

During our first summer here, I took a closer look at the garden. A few roses, azaleas and rhododendrons were struggling in what turned out to be very poor, barren, stony soil. Each time I dug up some soil, with its fine powdered texture would come large pieces of some sort of stone. I’ve kept quite a few pieces as many of them are attractive. Plants were given to friends who could grow them much better in their gardens, shrubs that I thought could be lightly trimmed each year were actually a mass of dead wood underneath, and the lawn would have to go as it wasn’t practical to have someone keeping it watered in the hot times, and having it mown regularly.

Why didn’t I think of these things when we bought the house? Because I was so excited about buying the house and living in France. It’s been a very long-held dream of mine and became even more apparent when I was leading tours to various regions here. The best part of those tours was creating itineraries for the lovely people who travelled with me.

I happened to go to an excellent symposium in England seven years ago. The Beth Chatto Symposium was attended by five hundred people and guest speakers were from around the world: designers, plantspeople, gardeners and academics. Here I learnt so much more about our changing climate and what we can do in our gardens to work with the new conditions. You can read about the information shared on www.hardy-plant.org.uk Beth Chatto Symposium 2018.

The things that I learnt influenced what I would do with the garden here. We are surrounded by two and a half metre high stone walls on two sides, and there are lower stone walls within the garden, which contribute to increasing the temperature.

I had almost everything cleared in the garden so that I was starting with a clean palette. The main area has been covered in a layer of small stones which are a mixture of cream, light tan and dark tan colours, which blend well with the house. The house has cream stone walls and dark brown doors and shutters.

Into this area I have put plants which will cope with no watering after the initial planting, and which cope with poor soils, include Perovskia, (the Russian sage), now renamed Salvia yangii, a tall white gaura, Aster frikartii ‘Monch’, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Forster’,some stipas, Echinacea ‘Green Swan’, Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, formerly Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Alba’.

Photo 1: This is how it looked when we arrived. Not too bad on the surface, but as I’ve mentioned, changes needed to be made. One of the exterior stone walls can be seen here, and one of the lower interior walls.

Photo 2: Looking back towards the house. The lovely old cherry tree has since succumbed to life. Young children loved climbing and playing in it.

Photo 3: Clearing the scene for new beginnings.

Photo 4: Part of the path that leads around the outside of the garden.

Photo 5: Looking towards our little shed in the back corner, and to the left of that is where the original kitchen was. This is now used as our tool room, storage for Ron’s bike, the barbecue, and miscellaneous items.