Summer has come and gone, and with it the Garden Open days of June. But there are still beautiful gardens open to visits by appointment, with all the colours of autumn. Columnist Sarah Beattie looks at three.
Open Gardens is an association that raises money from gardens to support disabled and seriously ill children and young people.
Founded in 2013, the scheme drew inspiration from the UK's National Gardens, and by 2020, had raised close to €100,000 for charity.
Read more: Open Gardens France: Vibrant borders and crisp hedges in Mayenne
Below are three gardens that you can visit by appointment:
Lesley and Michel Perrin, Gironde
At Portets in Gironde, there is a 4,000m2 walled garden in the English style which belongs to the delightful Lesley Perrin and her husband Michel.
Lesley came to France in 1962 to be a ‘lectrice’ at the University in Bordeaux. Michel, from Pau in the Pyrenees, was teaching there. This year they will have been married for sixty years.
They spent their careers at the University and in 1986 bought their large, early 19th-Century house in the middle of Portets, right on the road but bordered by vineyards and stretching down to the Garonne river, it had been many things in the course of its existence.
It required an immense amount of work and the garden had to wait. It took ten years to clear the rubbish and detritus – Lesley said ruefully, “the villagers had pretty much used it as a dump. There were self-sown acacia trees which had to be removed. The garden has odd shapes but,” she continues, “it had some good bones!”
Lesley explains that the existing avenue of hornbeams and the limes in front of the house gave the start to building the structure of the garden and they lent an air of maturity their new creation.
The garden is divided into rooms, in the classic English style, each one hidden from the other until you emerge. There are trees and shrubs and a kitchen garden.
“I am not so much interested in flowers as the play of light and shade”, explained Lesley. “Different textures and volumes are important, each room should be a cohesive whole”.
While the soil is very sandy and does not retain water, they have a well that has fortunately never run dry, allowing them to maintain the garden with a sprinkler system.
Lesley and Michel open the garden every year for the Rendez Vous Aux Jardins weekend at the beginning of June.
They have an award from the Gironde horticultural society and they are sent visitors from them too.
“It’s a lot of work, particularly at our age – I am 85 now and Michel is 88 – and I don’t like to see gardens unkempt. I do a lot of weeding,” she says.
Rewilding is not an option. “It’s a bit wild by the kitchen garden,” she pauses, “well, not really. Our daily help likes to be out more than in, so she assists.”
As they could not contemplate another Open Day in the year but wanted to continue to support Open Gardens/Jardins Ouvert (in addition to doing all translations for the association), Lesley and Michel decided to open by appointment.
Whilst Lesley says the garden is at its absolute best in spring and early summer, there is much to enjoy in autumn, particularly as the leaves begin to change colour and the late bloomers hit their stride.
To arrange an appointment email: lesleyperrin@orange.fr
Corinne and Richard Pinet, Oise
Corinne Pinet is a French coordinator for Open Gardens/Jardins Ouvert, organising group openings with several other gardens in Oise, Hauts-de-France, some 50km north-east of Paris.
She has decided to open her garden by appointment too. A former president of Parcs et Jardins de l’Oise, she stepped down after six years to devote more time to her own garden, although she remains a very active vice-president.
Forty years ago, when Corinne and her husband Richard took it on, it was much smaller and completely wild.
They were twice able to extend the garden as adjoining land was put up for sale in 1990 and 2012. The new additions, accessed by steps, have added interest by virtue of the different levels and terrain.
For the past forty years, they have added something new to the garden each year: a pathway in reclaimed ancient pavers, a pond, a terrace, two pergolas.
Anniversary and birthday gifts tend to be things for the garden like benches and furniture.
Corinne is the gardener, whilst Richard, now retired, cuts the lawns and attempts to control the ivy which threatens the old stone walls, despite his bad back. For the major pruning work, Corinne calls in a professional company.
Corinne loves to repeat her favourite plants in different areas of the garden creating a rhythm.
She says it is not a plant collector’s garden although she admits to quite a variety of shrubs, roses and perennials and some magnificent trees including a Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
Here and there, around the garden, Corinne has added well-clipped balls of box, yew and euonymus.
She sees them as full stops in the design, allowing a pause in the exuberance and overspill of the more romantic planting.
She appreciates, too, their forms in winter when the perennials have died back. Corinne is the first to admit the garden is not immaculate – some areas are left to be more wild so that their resident hedgehogs are not disturbed.
It has always been a family garden but there’s never been a football pitch for their five children and now eight grandchildren although there is a trampoline hidden by the chicken run, sandpits and little beds where the children can grow their own plants.
For her 60th birthday, Corinne added a cabin to the garden.
If you would like to visit her very beautiful garden, email Corinne at copinet@wanadoo.fr.
Margaret and Yves Guerit, Aveyron
Le Jardin des amis – the friends’ garden – was created on a small budget with plants and cuttings from friends and the incorporation of the wild plants which surround the garden and its setting in the middle of a wood in the Lézert valley in Aveyron.
Margaret and Yves Guerit have worked hard to carve out a garden with a very special atmosphere which promotes calm and meditation.
There are many different perennials and shrubs and a productive vegetable garden – all without the use of pesticides or insecticides.
Contact Margaret – who is English – to arrange an appointment: yvesguerit@hotmail.com.
For a full list of gardens which are open by appointment for Open Gardens/Jardins Ouverts, go to www.open-gardens.eu.
Click on ‘Find a garden’, search by location and select on the ‘Open by Appointment’ button.
