It all starts with the big bang; there is no way to avoid the box garden. If you imagine the site as caterpillar-shaped, the pointy head is the entrance and the Buxus parterre of the Bastion are the large, dominating eyes. (Talking of caterpillars, the garden was saved from the threat of the south-east Asian box-tree moth Cydalima perspectalis by the use of Bacillus thuringiensis var Kurstaki, a natural bacterium, not a chemical insecticide.) It was Bertrand Vernet de Marqueyssac who made it possible to grow a garden on this rocky site by building rampart-like walls to support its four main terraces after he acquired the chateau in 1692. Rumour had it that he called in André Le Nôtre to design the gardens but this has been debunked. It was, in fact, a pupil of the great man, a Monsieur Porcher, who worked on the design, basing it on his master’s for the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in a similar setting above the Seine. A new chateau was built by Bertrand’s descendants on the eve of the French Revolution, incorporating part of the older one. This building survived that period of turmoil and was designated a ‘Monument Historique’ in 1948 for its façade and amazing roof, tiled in local limestone flags weighing over five hundred tons, a style known as lauzes. As in all the great houses, each generation adds something, but every now and again someone of real energy and talent comes along and transforms the place. In the case of Marqueyssac, that person was Julien de Cérval (1818-1894).

One of the advantages of writing about gardens is that I am sometimes invited to come and enjoy it out of normal hours. It is such a privilege to be alone in an historic site and my arrival in Marqueyssac in early June, at six thirty in the morning, was extraordinary. It occurred to me that Julien de Cérval would have experienced the fantastic mists that rose from the river, shrouding the garden in a ghostly veil, muting its colours and diffusing the light. Spider webs decorated the topiary like spun bunting and a whole galaxy of tiny snails, their shells swirled with vortex markings in shades of white, pink and brown, studded the space between. Something of this magic, half horror – half enchantment must have inspired him to infuse the site with ideas from the European Romantic style when he inherited Marqueyssac in 1861. Much of him, however, was devoted to Italy and the gardens he had studied there having joined the Legion Romaine in 1849 to defend the Pope’s estates – a group often known as the nineteenth-century Crusaders. The garden demonstrates these two influences, plus Cérval’s passion for, and deep knowledge of, agronomy.

The team of gardeners arrived just before 7 am, dressed smartly in their uniform and each carrying a rucksack containing the tools of their trade, including their dedicated pair of shears which they take home every night to clean and restore to razor-sharp perfection. By 7.30 am feet could be heard crunching on the gravel paths and the tap-tap of hand shears at work began for the day. Julien de Cérval was somewhat obsessed with Buxus and planted tens of thousands of them throughout the estate, some in the parterre, others bordering long walks or forming green tunnels, and some growing freely through informal woodland. The amazing box garden which wows visitors today replaced the old potager of the Bastion area as a ‘terrasse d’agrément’, an ornamental space with serpentine paths passing through beds of undulating box forms, punctuated by the strong verticals of cypress and pines. I can see how walking through this wonderland for the household would have been a distraction from the real world, with constant small changes wrought by the weather, season or time of day keeping the experience fresh.

Mention is often made of the Italian influence here, but it is not the symmetrical, formal Italy of Medici Villas; the feel for me is more of the Romantic Italy of Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Perhaps the informality of the box shapes recalls ancient hedges which time has sculpted – Cérval would have known that the Emperor Augustus had box hedges and topiary in his gardens in Rome around 27BCE. He would also have been aware of the opening in 1867 of the new Parc aux Buttes-Chaumont in Paris with its many sinuous paths, Temple of Sibylle perched atop a cliff fifty meters above an artificial lake, and its relaxed, informal box hedging clipped in waves. Unfortunately, we have no archival evidence to back up any of these theories – Julien didn’t even leave a note of the gardens he particularly admired – however the Bastion Garden with its roiling forms says it all; you are in a place dedicated to the emotions. Scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic glades, and rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation –  Marqueyssac has all the features of a garden created in the late Romantic spirit.

The garden divides quite neatly along the length of the caterpillar shape into two ‘atmospheres’: one which is hot and dry and Mediterranean in character along the south flank which follows the line of the river; and the other is much more humid and temperate. I like to take the path along the hot and dramatic cliff walk, passing the little chapel where members of his family are buried to this day. The chapel had been built by a previous owner but Julien gave it a gothic makeover and dedicated it to, (I am tempted to say himself), Saint Julien, considered the patron saint of lost travellers, ferrymen, innkeepers and circus performers – I wonder which of these appealed most to him. A rustic gate sees you through to the dramatic cliff walk with its overhanging viewing platforms, one of which is the start of an even scarier walk known by the Italian name, Via Ferrata, ‘a mountain route equipped with fixed ladders, cables, and bridges in order to be accessible to climbers and walkers’.

The chalk escarpment is populated with a limited number of species which have made themselves at home here, including Acer campestre, Quercus robur, Quercus ilex and Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree. The dark leaves of the Holm oak, common in the region around Sarlat, have given the area its name; the ‘Perigord Noir’. Here, they stand out in contrast to the pale rock – conjuring menace and a frisson to add to that of the sheer drop to certain death on the other side of the path. What a gift this topography is to anyone wanting to induce the fear and awe essential to a garden of the emotions. Think Gothik Horror film with the innocent beauty taking this percorso pericoloso to meet her lover by moonlight, with the frightening shadows of dark oaks chasing her, and the mists rising from the river below. Today, discrete Perspex signs ensure you won’t get lost and give a bit of botanic guidance, remarking plants such as Helianthemum vulgare – Rock rose, and education for children about the geology and fauna.

Pathways string ‘event’s together like coloured stones on a necklace. Viewing platforms, sculpture or built structures such as a Cabane en Brande (hut made from heather), the Asile du Poète (poet’s retreat) or the Cabane en Cloche, a wonderfully constructed traditional dry-stone shelter with a bell-shaped roof, are the reinvention of the eighteenth-century practice of creating temples and grottos. Steps and linking corridors encased in arched box connect the dry and dramatic south-facing side to the damper and cooler north. This cooler, more humid micro-climate allowed Cérval to work with a different palette of plants and trees such as Elms, Laburnum anagyyroides, Platanus x hispanica and Cercis siliquastrum. In fact, he cleverly cools the whole design down too, culminating in a four-metre wide, completely flat and straight, (one might say Cartesian), ride, flanked by shady trees and on one side a rock face wall of hewn blocks hosting moss and ferns. Which brings us back to the chateau.

It also brings us to another energetic and exceptional person, the current owner of the site Kléber Rossillon, who had the vision and energy to completely renovate Marqueyssac from its post-war state of total dilapidation to what we see today. It opened to the public in 1997 after a number of years’ work. He is also responsible for Castelnaud, the marvellous medieval chateau-fort (castle), on the other bank of the river. Rossillon’s story is worth a detour on google but it is his design for a modern topiary artwork which we come to at the end of the circuit which I will finish with. Le Chaos is said to have started life when a box of the rectangular sugar cubes popular in France spilled onto the breakfast table. I don’t know how true this story is but I would love it to be. A number of scrubby trees were cleared on the slope behind the chateau, yet more Buxus planted and frames were installed to guide the topiary. Today it is fully grown and an interesting, crisply geometric, juxtaposition to the curves of the old parterre.

As usual, I have left features and aspects of the garden for you to discover but, if you intend to visit, I think this is  garden worth getting up early for, or seeing on one of their candlelit evenings in summer – or indeed at any time of year because this is truly a garden for all seasons, and deservingly listed as a National Historic Monument.

Address: Les Jardins de Marqueyssac, 24220 Vezac, France

Phone: +33 5 53 31 36 36

https://marqueyssac.com/?lang=en

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If ever I have taken my garden for granted I apologise to the Universe. It may be small and it may be urban but it has been a source of joy, and at the moment, while the world is trying to manage the spread of the Covid 19 virus, it is a luxury beyond words. The Jardin de Curé, or Curate’s Garden, is an eighteenth-century French garden type born out of the crisis of its Revolution. It was intended to give succour to the village priest, not only in the physical sense but in the intellectual and spiritual realm too. It has been neglected in our modern world but it is beginning to make a comeback as people recognise its virtues. Last summer I visited a wonderful reconstruction in the garden village of Chédigny in the Touraine region and this seems to be an apposite moment to write about it.

The Touraine is endlessly garlanded with superlatives: often referred to as ‘the Garden of France’, it has more than its fair share of great cuisine, brilliant cheeses, amazing, world-famous chateaux and, of course, the ‘best’ accent in the whole of France. Difficult then for a pretty little village among other beauty spots to make its mark, but Chédigny has done just that by transforming itself into the first, and as yet only, village to have been designated a ‘Jardin Remarquable’ in its entirety. Pavements have been removed, parking moved out from the centre of town and homes smothered with a collection of 1000 climbing roses, supported by a choir of flora which in summer makes the whole place sing. It may be famous for its Rose Festival, held on the weekend of French Mothering Sunday, but Chédigny has something much more important to offer – its very special Jardin de Curé, which it believes to be unique in France.

Go to the centre of the village and follow the path around to the back of the church where you will be greeted by an outstanding specimen of a lime tree striding the space between the church and the old presbytery. The ground floor of the Curé’s home is now a lovely little restaurant and tearoom with a terrace which overlooks his old garden. It is a delightful spot and, as the garden was closed for lunch, a brilliant opportunity to sit and enjoy the scene from what would have been his everyday point of view. Then make your way through the little greenhouse entrance to the wonderful historic reconstruction created by this imaginative community.

If you hadn’t heard of a Jardin de Curé before you may feel you have walked into a veg garden, with herbs and flowers and some other bits and bobs, set in a rather formal framework, but giving the overall impression of a joyful, abundant and somewhat haphazard potager. And, on a level, that’s what it is – perfectly lovely too. What elevates this garden type for me is the intention behind it; the subtext. It is indeed a garden to feed the body but it aspires to be so much more. It is a garden for thinking, a garden of messages and iconography, for learning and teaching, for medicine, horticultural experimentation, curiosity, biodiversity and spiritual celebration and reflection. I think of it as a garden designed to feed mind, body and soul, and at this moment in time it has great appeal, especially since it flourished in a time of particular need.

The village Curate always lived a fairly modest life-style and did not share in the enormous wealth of the Church or the collection of local tithes; a kind of taxation requiring about a tenth of all agricultural production be given to the church as a ‘donation’. He had to keep to a strict budget to keep all the expenses of his office within his means. Things were tight enough but, on the 4 August 1789, during a night of sweeping reforms, tithes were abolished and the State took over Church funding. The following year the French State slashed the income of the local Curate; from now on he had to find his own way to stretch his income – and the presbytery garden was to be a godsend.

The Jardin de Curé is alive and well today as an expression in the French language which, very loosely, refers to a bit of a disorderly jumble of a garden; but the actual historic gardens are rare and misunderstood. Situated behind the presbytery, the basic design follows that of the Roman, Greek and Persian gardens described by much admired writers such as Pliny the Elder. At their simplest they follow the form of a Greek or Roman cross with paths dividing the space into four planting areas, usually defined by a box border. There can be extensions to this format, as there are at Chédigny, but the cross is always at its heart with a water basin or crucifix at the node. Each quarter had a specific purpose; different plantings were directly related to the needs of the Curate and his work:

Flowers – to this day the Catholic Church is very specific about the role plants and flowers play in the liturgy of the sacred year. They are there to highlight the different feasts and festivals and not as general horticultural adornment. For instance, during Lent no flowers should be used, although leaves and branches are permitted but then, on Easter Day, there should be a profusion of yellow and white blossoms symbolising the light of the risen Christ. The Curate would have had a profound knowledge of the symbolic role of flowers and he would have grown these in one of the ‘quarter beds’ to decorate the church all year round.

Vegetables – would have been for his personal sustenance to supplement his salary. His parishioners would have donated plants and seedlings and it is thought that they had a hand in planting them too, wherever they found a space in the vegetable bed. It is this community planting which, it is thought, led to an informal arrangement as one seasonal speciality followed another at the pace dictated by the Curate’s appetite.

Herbs and Simples – were also essential, not just for supporting the health of the Curate but for his work in healing the sick among his flock and other tasks such as embalming the dead. Of course, they weren’t just for medicinal use but were valued for their flavour and for making oils and waters for household and personal use, such as insect repellent or lavender water. He would have been keen to grow new specialities to extend his repertoire and in the Chédigny garden they have illustrated this with unusual plants like cardamom.

Vines or Soft Fruits – if it was at all possible, grapes to be made into communal wine were grown in the final section but fruit was also very important, both for its symbolic value in the church and for eating. The enclosing boundaries of the garden were festooned with trained fruit trees of all kinds. The Curé performed an important role in the community, being one of just a few people with access to the sophisticated libraries of the old abbeys and monasteries. These libraries were an important source of information on the latest and most interesting discoveries on botany, and cutting edge, experimental methods in horticulture. Remember, most people did not travel too far from their home, so getting hold of new varieties of fruit and vegetables was a really exciting event. It was often the Curé who had the knowledge and experience to multiply these new varieties through grafting and division.

Part of his job was to be a thinker and these gardens were also designed to enhance reflection and the contemplation of the life of Christ. At Chédigny fourteen evergreen Euonymus japonicus shrubs have been planted equidistant to each other to represent the fourteen stations of the cross – an open-air ritual, following the passion of Christ in vegetal form. There is also a little corner dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which in past times may well have been decorated with plants and flowers with Marian connotations. The pathways would have been mindfully walked to practice the Breviary and provided a framework in which to pass some of the canonical hours. Very young children would have had their first religious lessons in this space, with the garden used to illustrate the wonder of nature and God’s power of creation.

Nothing comes of nothing, so although I have talked a lot about the Christian symbolism behind everything in a Jardin de Curé it is important to note that much of its exuberance and everyday pragmatism comes from an older, secular tradition – that of Le Jardin de Grandmère, or Granny’s Garden. These have something of the romance we associate with the Cottage Garden, but whereas we rather invented the concept in sentimental fashion during the Victorian period, the Granny Garden was a reality; a practical working space, combining food, medicine, decoration for the home and a place to exchange a delicacy with a dollop of gossip on the side. I imagine that the Curé would have had many a private chat with troubled villagers in that special state one assumes when gardening. If you are visiting one of the grand chateaux of the region, I would recommend a detour to this lovely little spot to spend a moment in a humble, but inspirational garden, which just may speak to you too.

https://www.touraineloirevalley.co.uk/the-village-garden-of-chedigny/

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The charming little sea-side town of Étretat is renowned for two things: its stunning coastal scenery, which attracted Impressionist painters, most notably Monet; and the oyster-beds created here at the behest of Marie-Antoinette, famed for her delight in these molluscs. And now there is a third; the garden. I say, The Garden because that really is enough to get you there. Drive to the town and then follow signs up the steep incline to the cliff top. You have to park wherever you can at the side of the road because there is no car park as such, and then walk up a lane, past a few Belle Epoque villas hidden in the trees, to a windy, natural viewing platform with a 1950s chapel and a contemporary art gallery, plus the entrance to the garden of the Villa Roxelana.

It’s a dramatic spot for a garden. The site is fairly narrow and steep with a spectacular view of the sea and one of the three famous chalk arches, the Porte d’Aval. I had seen images but was still rather taken aback by the real thing. Garden magazines had been pressing the point that this is a garden designed on Neo-Futuristic principles which call for the blending of art, technology, ethical values and nature to the benefit of future generations. My first impression was that someone had taken a big, fat, felt pen and drawn swirls and sweeps and parallel lines all over the landscape and then magicked the doodles into topiary. It was amazing and thrilling, claustrophobic, despite its elevated position, mad and, in places, flirting with kitsch. And I think its creator, Russian born landscape architect, Alexandre Grivko, would be quite happy with my reaction because one of his principle aims was to elicit emotion from the visitor. Mine were certainly in a jumble, ranging from irritation with the ‘singing’ trees to rapt admiration for the artistry in the topiary.

Grivko is co-founder and chief architect of the international landscape design company, Il Nature, based in London. Take a look at his portfolio and it is clear that he is deeply influenced by both French and Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens plus, in certain projects, there is a hint of the Belgian Style, epitomised by Jacques Wirtz, combining structural shrubs and trees with fluid country-style planting. He describes Étretat as his ‘laboratory’ of ideas and best practice which will provide a template for future projects, especially, one suspects, those which have an historical aspect. Indeed, Étretat won the European Garden Award 2019-2020 for ‘Best Development of an Historic Garden or Park’. Grivko knows this part of France well and when he heard the site was for sale he jumped at the chance to work with the splendid view, the environment and with the history of the place.

The house and garden were built around 1905 by a famous Parisian actress, Madame Thébault, friend of Monet and lover of orchids. There was no real ‘historic’ garden here one suspects but Grivko has extended his sensibility to include both the cultural heritage and natural history of the general area. However, as he says himself, one of the advantages of a public garden of your own is that you can really experiment and take risks which you cannot do when working on the private gardens of clients. The site consists of seven named garden areas which flow one into the other in no particular order, allowing the visitor to make their own cocktail of sensory experience, including auditory ones, provided by various art installations like ‘the Clockwork Forest’, where the public can turn a key to start the music. Topiary inspired by the past is married to the fantasy world of Alice in Wonderland in the Jardin d’Aval, and references the local oyster beds on the beach in the Le Jardin d’Émotions where it is partnered with humanoid heads made from polyester resin and aluminium powder by Spanish artist, Samuel Salcedo, (not my cup of tea but people seemed to be loving them). Then there is the Jardin Zen, which may represent the harmonious union of man and nature, but does it through the rather exotic lens of a Buddhist warrior monk. It’s all here – a full-throated mix of Versailles and Alice’s Wonderland.

The Neo-Futuristic label gives me the most pause for thought. Grivko says he has been influenced by the 2007 Neo-Futuristic City Manifesto of Vito di Bari, which calls for urbanists, architects, designers and artists to believe in cities releasing emotions, driven by eco-sustainability, ethical values and the implementation of new materials and technologies, to provide a better quality of life for city dwellers. Think Zaha Hadid and I get it, but it is not so obvious in the context of this garden. It is a conversation I would love to have with the designer. The sculpture situated all over the garden certainly adds another layer of emotion to the design, not always positive I must say, and perhaps the amazing flow of the topiary design has been computer generated, but I am not sure how this garden is ploughing a new furrow. The species he uses to create his amazing sweeps of topiary are really interesting, reviving old favourites like the Georgian superstar, Phillyrea angustifolia, which John Evelyn referred to as, ‘incomparable verdure’, and introducing new possibilities like Elaeagnus x submacrophylla (formerly x ebbingei), a native of Normandy, whose grey leaves reflect the colours of the cliffs and the sea. And fringing the long sweeps of hedging with delicate Muehlenbeckia complexa is inspired. In fact, it will be very useful to observe how the choice of plants to suit this rough and tough costal environment stands up over time. Maybe this is one aspect of the work being done here which fits the future-ready label. Look out for a fuller discussion of this garden in the Hortus Journal later in 2020, but do go and see it if you can as there is much to enjoy and quite a bit which gives pause for thought.

If the garden at Étretat is looking to a brighter future for society based on a set of ideals developed by the creative professions, down the road there is another garden which, in its day, was the product of another group of thinkers and creators who were convinced they too had the recipe for happiness. Les Bois de Moutiers, built on the coast at Varengeville-sur-Mer, is the very first collaboration (and the only one in France) of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, perhaps the most famous partnership of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Moving on from one garden to the other in a single day makes both visits more interesting and the contrast in emotional response is marked.

Where Étretat is full of edgy drama right from the start as you sidle the car up to the edge of the cliff to park, Les Bois de Moutiers is all gentle bucolic order. Although the grounds here meet the same coast, you don’t get a sense of this as you approach through well-groomed, little country hamlets wrapped in deep green cloaks of hedges and deciduous trees. All is orderly when you arrive, with a symmetrical view through a confident gateway, framing generously planted borders in tasteful shades of pale, which flank a wide walk focussed on the romantic face of the house. There is a spacious and convenient car park, elegantly screened by trees planted on mounds which hint at the romance of an English country holloway. I have to admit that I immediately felt at home in a style of garden whose rules I have absorbed since childhood. The radical vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement grew from a rejection of the Industrial Revolution and was based on a romantic and sentimental vision of a Utopian, rural past, when all were happy in their creative and fulfilling roles within a wholesome community. People should be living a simple but ‘good’ life where everything is either useful of beautiful. Emotion, truth in architecture which reflects the human experience, a desire to make the world a better place through design, these are common ideals which have shaped both the twenty-first century garden at Étretat and Moutiers, its respected elder. Interestingly both embrace an element of fantasy and deliberate dislocation with the real world, in order to express ideas aimed at changing society for the better.

Frenchman, Guillaume Mallet, was thirty-eight when he fell in love with the site at Les Bois de Moutiers. An anglophile from a wealthy banking family, he was deeply affected by his stay on the Isle of Wight as an eleven-year-old boy, where he experienced a gentler way of gardening which embraced nature. As an adult he developed a large circle of artistic, literary and musical friends on both sides of the Channel and was well acquainted with the work of William Morris. He met Edwin Lutyens in 1898 in Paris and, sensing his exceptional abilities, commissioned him to build a house in this beautiful spot. House, garden and park were designed to work in harmony, with Jekyll called in to help Mallet decorate and soften the structure with romantic and billowing planting.

Where Étretat has its Alice in Wonderland theme, encouraging fantasy and flights of the imagination, it is small and hemmed in and has to make a big impression in a short space of time. Moutiers is also considered other-worldly but it has the space to be more subtle about it, and perhaps relies more on our ability to self-generate this spirit. The twelve-hectare site allows the house room to breathe, protected by its little coterie of domestic gardens, set off by an apron of gently sloping lawns, beyond which mixed woodland with planted interventions, all by Mallet, make their way down to the sea. It was experienced as a magical, fairy tale place with ever changing atmosphere depending on the light and the season. The young poet Jean Cocteau visited in 1913 (the date of his friend Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’) with André Gide and wrote:
‘have you forgotten that park?… I’m certain that I went walking there one evening with you. It went right down to the sea… a huge estate, at dusk: the dawn of the night. We couldn’t hear the sea… We were going through, if I remember rightly, four small walled gardens like Italianate cloisters…I count seven steps. We could hear a piano playing.’

Today, the building is quite a surprise; romantic in its fairy-tale features from the front but in a dreary state of disrepair to the rear which rather breaks the spell. The gardens too are unevenly kempt, with the principle courtyards near the house in best repair, but other areas are clearly struggling for care, attention and money. I hope a plan is in place to find the funding needed, not just for vital repairs but to allow for the correct plants to be restored to their rightful place and to let the garden shine again. I would have loved to have the chance to see the interior but this was not possible on my visit – all Arts and Crafts gardens are ideally designed to relate to the principle views from inside the house. House and garden really exist hand in hand.

Walking through the chain of gardens around the house it is a pleasure to pick out features which grew to be typical of a Lutyens-Jekyll garden: crazy paving, rounded ‘landings’, a pergola with stone piers and wooden cross beams, the typical ideal of a progression from formal areas around the house, gradually fading out to meet a completely naturalistic outer belt blending with the wider landscape. The principles of the Arts and Crafts garden have had a profound effect on garden making in Britain ever since, and I believe they still are the single most powerful template for garden designers, informing many of their decisions. The theory of an ideal society based on a kind of pseudo-medieval guild model may be risible t many today, but the desire to live a more harmonious life with nature as an inspiration is still with us – and I think this same desire informs the Neo-Futuristic movement. It is a bond, a common thread which links these two very different gardens and that is why they stand out for me as twin stars, the Castor and Pollux of the Alabaster Coast.

http://etretatgarden.fr/
https://www.boisdesmoutiers.com/
https://www.dieppetourisme.com/

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Is there such a thing as a French national garden style? There are certainly some recognisably French garden types; such as the clipped formality of Le Notre, the exuberantly decorative potager, and the regional specificity of the gardens of Normandy or Provence. But can a garden be the epitome of a national psyche? For example, I think the French are deeply conflicted between cool, Cartesian rationality, and a passionate desire to just be wild, à la Rousseau. So, if a garden here was able to square that circle, and bring a satisfying resolution to the tension between formality and informality, the natural and the man-made, the cerebral and the emotional – would that represent the perfect French style? If that were possible, then Le Jardin Plume, in Normandy, created by Sylvie and Patrick Quibel, would, in my view, be a serious contender.

You get a sense of what the Quibels saw in 1996, when they first visited the site, by the surrounding landscape when you arrive for a visit today; flat, featureless and dull, relieved by a forested green horizon. Certainly not the most romantic landscape Normandy has to offer. There’s no razzamatazz around the garden either: no signs en route, no car park and no fancy entrance; just a farm track to pull up on, and then a gap in a trimmed hedge and an A-board, announces you have reached the right place. There are no clues to what awaits behind the curtain hedges – which, actually, is rather a lovely thing in a society which feels the need to shout about just about everything to gain attention.

The eight acre site is designed as a conversation (with no shouting): a conversation between the several gardens which make up the whole; between the garden and the agricultural land beyond; between the plants and the elements; between geometry and poetry. You enter via a plant nursery and then, there it is, the famous Orchard Garden, star of so many glossy magazines, and the largest and most innovative of the garden spaces. It is a great chequerboard of mown squares with the trunks of apple trees serving as striking verticals. The stark geometry of it started life as a rope stretched in an axial line from the house into the landscape. I love the practicality of this founding act upon which the whole design hinges. Paths describing a grid are closely mown, while unmown squares are left to grow wild, with seasonal interventions such as a mass of camassias in the spring. It’s an unpretentious idea which manages to unite the grandeur of Le Notre, the reason of Descartes and the humanity of Rousseau. It appears rigid but, change your position on the grid, and squares morph into diamonds and, again, into lozenges – a tableau where the actors include the elements, light and shade and the huge overhead canvas of the sky.

The grid is a strong motif which holds the more ephemeral elements in its arms. Grasses add texture and movement, as well as framing the orchard in architectural blocks. Presiding over this graphic ensemble is a rectangular mirror pool which has the quiet authority of a teacher in front of the class. It also acts as a fulcrum for exploring other parts of the garden. So, there it is – equilibrium achieved: discipline and the uncontrollable working together. A real pièce de résistance. Face the other way, towards the house, and the Summer Garden is a variation on the theme; resolving the tension between the strict and the undisciplined.

The Summer Garden is raised, just one step, above the Orchard; it’s a detail which counts. At first glance it could be taken for a conventional, box parterre, allowed to grow to an outsized chest-height. Observe a little more closely and you will see that each compartment is, in fact, open on one side and filled with blooms that take their time to perform and are at their best in late summer. The colour is dazzling – a palette of molten lava where crocosmia, helenium, helianthus, achillea, echinacea, nasturtium and others bubble, boil and explode, often escaping the confines of their cages. Restraint and abandon live happily together; each complementing the other.

The design of Jardin Plume owes a debt to two books and one garden maker. When it comes to an understanding of geometry and framing the Quibels say they were deeply influenced by Grammaire des Jardins: Secret de Metier, by René Pechère. For poetic inspiration, sensibility to wild nature and a spritz of the unorthodox, they studied Derek Jarman’s book about the last garden he made at his home in Dungeness, Kent. The garden maker was Henk Gerritsen, whose own garden at Priona Tuinen, (itself based on the ideas of Mien Ruys), was a revelation in how wild planting, in strong structure, could work as a template for a modern garden philosophy. The Orchard and the Summer Garden are versions of that template and, in a relatively discrete area, near one of the pretty barns is another – Le Jardin Plume, or the Feather Garden, which has given its name to the whole.

This space came as a surprise as I had always assumed that the garden takes its name from the dramatic late summer grasses of The Orchard, but no, this is at the heart of it all, a declaration of intent: strong structure and wild planting exemplifies the wider ideals of our modern era. Here, a hedge of clipped, green waves dances with a spume of veronicastrum, calamagrotis and other species chosen for their light, feathery effect, while sanguisorba and thalictrum plashes the whole with energetic dots and dashes. It’s another well-known set piece in this photogenic garden, which looks striking through the lens of a camera and has been admired around the world.

It’s pretty, and it is fun to try and capture glimpses of the lacy planting enclosed by solid folds of hedge, but I just don’t get it. I suspect it’s because I felt wrong footed. The garden sets a clear agenda and this hedge seems to represent a shift in the paradigm – it is not a strong and stable structure acting as a foil for something more ephemeral. Although solid in itself, it seems to be referencing something unstable, like a dinosaur’s back, or Hokusai’s waves or the rise and fall of life itself? The balance between logic and emotion seems to be lacking here – and I find it unsettling. But perhaps there is nothing wrong in that.

There is plenty more to explore, amongst which is The Autumn Garden. This was inspired by childhood and the feeling of being small in a world of giants. At its best this garden of tall, vigorous species becomes a jungle of stems, leaves and flowers for us to part as we explore, like adventurers in a jungle. It’s a powerful idea, bringing us back to our elemental interaction with nature; before we learnt to be designers or critics – when we just engaged in a tactile way with plants without knowing their names and likes and dislikes. Here the structural hedge is used to create a dark green box, and the wild planting is its filling of tangled emotion. There’s a conventional and slightly chaotic Flower Garden too and I liked a secret corridor of white rosebay willowherb, Chamaenerion angustifolium, whose pink cousin is so familiar to us along railway lines, the fluffy tufts of seed heads left to speak of potential new life.

Plume means feather in French; there is no need to spell out the link between feathers and the planting style here. Plume also refers to a pen. I like to think of this garden as representing both the feather and the pen – the textural and the graphic. The Quibels write that they hope they have reconciled those who like clean lines with those who like wildness. I would go further and say that they have managed the difficult task of handling the tension between the desire to be rational and the urge to be wild which underlies a great deal of French culture: they have indeed mostly squared the circle in their very French creation – Le Jardin Plume.

NB The Quibels use a restricted palette of plants which are all available for sale, at reasonable prices, in their charming little nursery. At the moment it is fine to buy plants and transport them within the EU, including the UK.
I visited in late August as part of a little tour I devised of gardens in Normandy plus Monet’s Giverny which is an hour or so away. I think this is a good time to visit the Jardin Plume because you get the full impact of the grasses, however, the flowers in other areas were past their best.
There are no refreshments available and local towns do close down on certain days so come prepared. Price of tickets at time of writing is 9.50 euros for adults – see their website for details and opening times.

lejardinplume.com
Jardin Plume: 790 Rue de la Plaine, 76116 Auzouville-sur-Ry, France

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