Villandry in winter

Villandry has been called ‘the finest potager in the world.’ For much of the year its beds are a mass of vegetables, from soft herbs and jewelled beetroot to blowsy purple cabbages and bright chubby pumpkins, all edged by long, low lines of trained apples and pears. It is a kitchen garden like no other, [...]

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Potager du Roi: from stinky pond to king’s kitchen

When Louis XIV decided in 1678 that he wanted a potager (kitchen garden) near his palace in Versailles, where he could bring visitors to admire the abundant produce, the site chosen was unpromising marshland, known as l’étang puant, or the stinking pond. Five years of work and perhaps a million francs later, the plot had [...]

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Rainbows and daisies

At one of the side entrances to l’Eglise Saint Germain des Prés in the 6th arrondissement are four little box-edged flower beds. This summer, one of them is thickly planted with rainbow-stemmed swiss chard, pink cosmos and dahlias. (There are also some rather unnecessary, straggly standard roses.) My daughter and I stood for a few [...]

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Dreams of Chelsea

Today is the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show and each year we become rather wistful, thinking about the wonderful show gardens, and indeed about our own little plot back in England. The French don’t really have an equivalent to Chelsea. But many chateaux run fine plant shows, like the well-known Journée des Plantes [...]

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