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Raining on our parade
Goring Twinning Association’s 3rd garden visit to Normandy coincided with the same spell of wet weather so gratefully received by gardeners in drought parched Goring.
However, the gardens we visited were strongly influenced by Hidcote and Sissinghurst and the tenets of Gertrude Jekyll, so seeing them in sunshine and showers probably added to the sense of déjà vu.
All four gardens were privately owned and bore testimony to the passion of their owners, all of whom did the bulk of the work themselves; that is the women did the work and the design, whilst the husbands were dismissed as mowers of lawns, diggers of ponds and trimmers of hedges.
There were vast avenues of yew and hornbeam, with series of rooms surrounded by yet more hedges and topiary, “les mixed borders”, moon gardens, sun gardens, ponds and streams, reconstructed Norman lavoirs and donkey houses; and nothing smaller than 6 acres.
The owners of our third garden, a retired pharmacist and a teacher, had intended to buy a house in the country with a small, no maintenance garden as they had no previous gardening experience. A dozen years later they have 10,000 visitors a year.
Words really don’t do the gardens justice; so we have supplied a few photgraphs on the following web pages.
Our party of 48 included professional gardeners as well as those whose gardening consists of watching the weeds grow, and the owners were happy to answer questions on species and cultivation. The most intriguing item was a mulch of buckwheat husks used in two of the gardens.
The downside was spending many hours in an admittedly comfortable coach; travelling as far as Brittany in pursuit of horticultural excellence. This was unusual as most exchanges are focussed on Bellême itself or the immediately surrounding areas.
The upside was the usual warm welcome, good traditional French food, an informal Evening Get Together with an impromptu Hokey Cokey demonstration from the Brits; windup toy racing, and stunning singing from the very talented Hanna W.
Memorable Moments: Bob & Ros G’s host, who cleared the road of a fallen tree to get them both to the coach on time,
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