Now I don’t often write up notes about gardens visited or even work done away from the Ardeche garden. But this seems like a good place to take notes of designs and colour schemes that are striking and of note.

First garden visit with Andrew this week was out to Beth Chatto’s in Essex. We principally went out to have a good snook around her gravel and scree gardens. But we managed a good hike around the rest of her property as well.

First combination that I thought worth trying to emulate was to match the alliums with the nepeta. I have had a tentative go at this in the little flower bed near the lawn. But the nepeta isn’t quite out yet, and the alliums weren’t happy in this slightly damper environment.

So I shall give it a go in the shade garden instead. They would go well with all the flowering thyme we have right now. These are images from her scree garden near the house. Flowering thyme is something one takes for granted. But it does so well here against the pebbles.

And this little bed was particularly winning. Hidden in here were some divine pulsatillas which have such great seed heads. We missed the flowering season (and I suspect being this early a flower it will be yellow) but if those seed heads stay on for ages, it will be well worth investing in them.

I wouldn’t have lingered as long over these plants had I been on my own. But the courtyard on our property is crying out for some careful planting.

These irises in the gravel garden have given me a good idea where to plant the two irises I bought from the plant fair at the festival of small nurseries at the Garden History Museum. I don’t want them so hidden in a planting scheme that they go un-noticed. And their foliage is so pert and strong that it would be a shame to lose them after the flowers are over.

Out in the main garden the first big clump of flowers you see are my new favourites. Now don’t go comparing my mighty clump of three plants with this swathe. But I can’t wait for mine to bulk out and emulate the magnificence of this display. Am I gushing? Too much tea. I shall try to be more restrained.

The other star plants of the visit proved to be the euphorbias. No surpsrise there as this is the season for admiring them. All that acid green. The ones in the gravel garden are the plants I have been trying to track down at three nurseries now: euphorbia polychroma major. And it’s not fair that I can’t find them. Apparently they self-seed like mad and everyone has scads of the stuff around every single garden we have visited this week. I shall search on. It provides such a refreshing contrast even in this page of mauve.

The euphorbias even look good with the ferns in the woodland garden. And it’s definitely an idea worth persuing. Shuttlecock ferns? Not sure, but I like the upright clumps here in this picture.

We managed to get around the garden without so much as a drop, but as soon as it came to assuaging plant lust in the nursery it bucketed down. We were not to be deterred mind you. I managed to find my elusive hedge of calamagrostis Karl Foersters for the new path; a few pulsatillas and two very expensive pots of kniphofias. Why so pricey? Because they have green flowers. Bliss. I have always loved seeing red hot pokers in gardens, but found the colours way too loud. Green ones will do nicely among the grasses on the bank above the pool. But at the rate I am going, they will have to be nursed and divided and carefully built up over the seasons.

It’s a photo session this morning, no time to do more. I need to take note of the plants which are up and flowering early. As the shade garden is already problematic from a design point of view.

In the lilac bed the best early plants are the Persicaria bistorta superba. And aren’t they superb? I can’t wait for them to bulk out, and get big enough to take cuttings. I can picture this plant romping away in the shade garden and giving great pleasure to the early season growth.

Nothing else is up in the lilac bed: but the lavender is threatening with buds, and the rest all look healthy. Even the perovskia looks healthy which is great. Just a few weeks ago, they looked like weedy sticks.

Up in the shade garden the lupins are the only ones really putting up their flower heads. And they need more room already. In amongst these plants are baby gladiolus bulbs, and even some lilies. Next year they are going to get more room to grow.

Are these Lupin My Castle plants too pink? I still yearn from Lupin Masterpiece as there is more blue in the flower heads. But right now the colour is what I have and I will cherish them.  The rest of the shade garden is green. But the edges do have glimpses of nepeta six hills giant which came through the cold snowy winter.

Some of the geraniums are up. But I wasn’t attentive enough to note which geranium is which. Promise to be more diligent in my recording of the first flowers next visit. I did leave the labels at the base of the plants as I knew this very dilemma would occur.

The only other flowers showing promise (if you don’t count the flowering thyme all over the herb garden) are the roses in the courtyard. Not long now and the buds will burst.

My last task before heading off for the train was to take all my little seedlings down for a fortnight of babysitting. I knew it would be too onerous to ask Bernard to walk up each day to water in the shed. So I emptied the contents, placed them all in trays, and drove two loads down to Le Buisson and left them on Bernard’s terrace. Fingers crossed they will still be there mid May.

Ooh goody; I’m only ten days behind on this blog thing now. Luckily the cricket is on in the background and I am onto my second pot of tea. So I should be finished by lunchtime without going mad.

Here is the one gravel task that still awaits. I don’t think JB will be able to move his arms today after yesterday’s heroics with the barrow and the gravel. And mine feel as though I have hauled tonnes about as well. There is still the parking area to go.  But I ran out of weedproof fabric so couldn’t finish it last night. Actually I could have bought the fabric from the garden centre yesterday; but I am going to hold out until London. The stuff costs so much less there; and I am trying to be a teensy bit parsimonious right now. (There are plants to buy next week and I am sure to blow my budget at Beth Chatto and Great Dixter.)

I have rashly called this shot ‘Driveway before’; confident that before the month is out I can add a ‘Driveway after’ shot. All neat gravelled path and not a weed in sight.

Weeds. Now that’s a theme for today. Jean-Daniel came roaring past with his beast of a lawn mower last night – it does edges and looks like it was made in the century before last. Its cutting blade is about four feet across and he loves to do the edges of his road, our road and afterwards I notice that he is perfectly capable of taking out any plant you care to mention which gets in the way.

One can’t complain as the lovely man is doing a very good deed in keeping down the edges of the road. But I have lost two years of growth on my two fig trees which I planted in the east garden lawn. And have to fend off other plants with little green fences until they are tall enough for him to notice. He invariably strims at dusk as he is always running late in his daily chores.

So when he came by this morning to ask if I want my east lawn cut, I declined. What we see as a nascent wildflower meadow, everyone else sees as neglect. So I have mown a path in the middle of this lush growth and hope that satisfies everyone.

Actually Jean-Daniel is very lucky with his hired help: he has as many grass cutters as he wishes when he decides the grass is getting a bit too wild near his house. He just flips the switch on the electric fence and rides the horses up and leaves them for a few days to do their work.

They keep me company with their snorting and chortling as I work. And I spent hours nearby today: I set to by giving the shade garden its first ever proper weeding. The mulch is down but it’s not thick enough to cover all the unwanted grasses and mini brambles and chestnut seedlings which have popped up.

But you get results and by sitting in the shade it proved to be not too onerous a chore. Have I mentioned the weather at all this week? Gloriously sunny and warm. Every single day.

The lupins and lilies are now weed-free. And I even managed to clear a space for all the geraniums that are going to be planted out. If I wasn’t heading to London tomorrow I would let them grow on for another week. But with the temperature in the potting shed reading almost 26C they would cook after a day without a diligent watering.

So they may be teensy, and you may have to use the magnifying glass function on your keyboard to see them, but there are over seventy seedlings planted out.  And in between I even added the digitalis alba plants that also put on growth. I have to put little marker sticks down where I have placed each seedling. Against the background of shady ground, a carpet of bark chip mulch, and a forest of lupins you would never see them until you step on them.

Back inside after a long and mighty watering. (These tulips are holding on valiantly) and that was it for the day.

Madame Felix; definitely a woman of the She Who Must Be Obeyed camp, informed me that her truck will arrive early for the gravel delivery so I had better be ready. Every area must have someone of Madame Felix’s ferocious temperament. I tremble when I have to go into her huge building supplies store in Vernoux. And most others admit to feeling the same dread.

The store (and it’s the biggest up on the plateau, so indispensable to so many builders and home improvers) used to belong to her husband; but he tragically died young. And instead of selling up and putting her skills to another use (preferably not dealing with the public) which is what everyone assumed, she learnt the business and now runs the whole show.

And run it she does. You cannot step inside the door without the tirade of interrogation. Just to get this gravel was an ordeal. What do you want it for? How much do you need? Do you really need three cubic metres? Have you measured correctly? And what on earth are you doing ordering gravel rather than the cheaper white hard core? Out with it woman? Express yourself!

Knees a-knocking, I always manage to mangle my verbs and endings when I am under the barrage. But in the end there is a twinkle in her eye, and the deal complete. Madame Felix is happy as she has cowed yet another of her loyal customers into submission. And I have my gravel.

All this just to show you the two pictures I took. One at dawn and another at three minutes past eight. She may be a monster, but she keeps her promises.

I had booked JB to come and help me move the gravel down from the top road to the Calabert. It’s a trek of about fifty metres, downhill. But tedious. And the poor man really earned his wages today. I suspect he did more than forty barrow loads.

And while he was hauling and filling the barn, I started weeding the ledge under the vines, in preparation for a huge load of mulch.

This is a problem area of the courtyard, make no mistake. I understand the concept of the previous owners. They were hoping that the sedums they sowed would cover this area underneath the vines as a mulch. And would prove a pretty contrast to the lush green vines and the view of the potager just below. But they didn’t factor in the brambles. Or the nettles. Or the hollyhocks, nor the grass. It was a mess. Something last year’s houseguests Jan and Jane know only too well.

I have kept the hollyhocks in the foreground as I want them for the vases in the house. If they come up as the vivid crimson colour. If it’s the wishy washy pink they will be felled sooner. But the rest of the weeds were killed and yanked and generally removed. And I had to scrape up the small gravel mulch. Once I was down to the soil level I added yet more layers of weed proof fabric (which wasn’t doing its job last season) and then more mulch.

And then lastly came about half a foot of new lovely gravel. Call that a mulch. I dare the weeds to try and grow through this lot. (Actually I am sure they will, but at least there will be a whole lot less.)

Here is the mighty barn now that it has its mulch too. The weeds weren’t really a problem here inside the barn. But when the wind blew there were bits of dust and dirt swirling about. And this just about removes all the last traces of the rabbit breeding programme that used to take place under here. No more flies and no more mess.

I had to keep up with JB’s unrelenting loads of gravel. So once the vine area was covered I thought it best to get the stuff onto the herb bed too.

As I am the only one who knows which is a precious plant (those verbena seedlings at the back behind the artichoke plant look like sticks) and which is a weed. I took possession of three wheelbarrow loads of the stones from JB and slowly filled the bed. Using just a bucket (less weight, more tedium) I filled each area with pebbles and built up the mulch in the entire herb bed.

I never seem able to take a decent picture of this part of the garden; but I am delighted with the result. It looks so much more coherent now. Almost as if it was planned.

Thyme in front, then purple and green sage. Backing onto the two artichokes that survived the winter, interwoven with allium purple sensation, salvia Caradona, New Dawn roses, and a few thickets of verbena bonariensis transplants.  And in the distance the lush look of those Euphorbia wulfenii. All that’s missing is the long line of chives down the path. But they are actually showing signs of life. Pert and sitting upright in the gravel. So next trip I might even take a photo of them to complete the scene.

We drove down to Valence today and I couldn’t resist picking up yet more netting for the potager. Sturdier stuff to withstand the four legged variety of pests. I had yearned for this sort of material for ages, but never found it in our local garden centre in Vernoux. So with the opportunity to go to a mighty outlet of Gamm Vert, I swooped.

From a distance it looks like a mighty pair of fishnet stockings. And hopefully will last longer than the flimsier green net I have. In quantity.

I think this gives a better view – I threaded a bamboo pole along the bottom to give the net some weight and hopefully it won’t blow away in the first gust of mistral.

While out, our neighbour Jean-Daniel was hard at work with a tonne of gravel and tar and was assiduously repairing all the holes in our shared road. Tis a patchwork of colours, but at least the front wheels no longer sink so alarmingly when one drives up. The road belongs to the commune, but as our coffers are so empty (the commune’s that is) it’s up to individuals to fork out for gravel and tar. Not a bad investment, I think we have invested 200 euros for the tonne of goo plus the services of the St Michel employee with the truck and his few hours of time.

As my offer of help was politely declined (don’t you just love that smell of tar and warmth and acrid top notes of hot melting summer surfaces) I had no option but to head up to the house, unload my goodies and then get stuck into sorting out the central potager path.

Once the kale was up the central path was a sorry sight of weeds, rampant chives and scruffy bark. I transplanted all the chives to the edge of the steps leading down to the vegetable bed. No action shots as I just don’t know if the plants will survive. Most of them are in flower, which is a bad time to be uprooting and re-designing the herb bed. But we shall see. If the chives could have germinated and survived an entire growing season under the towering kale and broccoli plants, then maybe they are tougher than I first imagined.

Back to the path: First I had to carefully scrape off all that lovely bark chip mulch. No way was that going to waste. Then it was pull back the fabric, roll right down to the bottom of the path. And peg down an extra layer of black weed proof fabric that would reach to both sides of the path. No gaps required this year for any whimsy direct sowing of seeds. That’s just an invitation for weeds to establish. No, this is the year of snipping little slits and planting seedlings into well covered soil.

To demonstrate, here is the path. Newly mulched and with a whole row of small coriander seedlings poking out the side.

And to finish the day (and the day was well finished by the time I got round to taking these pictures) here are the two ‘before’ shots of the bare earth in the newly cleaned Calabert (barn) and the messy herb garden that is as lush with weeds as it is with sage, thyme and euphorbia plants.

Tomorrow morning, first thing, we take delivery of three cubic metres of river gravel. Can’t wait.

If it’s Monday it has to be strawberry day. The bed was sorely in need of a good sorting. Even though all the bed was laid to weedproof fabric and mulched with good sized river stones – well you get the hint. Weeds had crept up between the gaps and were competing with the fruit. From a distance it doesn’t look that bad. And at the far right end of the bed the fruit is decidedly lush and promising. Just look at all that fruit. It will probably ripen and go over by the time we get back in a fortnight, but hey, that’s gardening.

Cynical, moi? Must be the poisons of the stinging nettles surging through my system and addling my brain.  Weeding this strawberry bed meant getting up close and personal to a whole crop of stinging nettles that were growing out of the rock walls. They were downright low down and nasty. And I might as well have rolled all around the thicket of it for all the good the cautious plucking and picking did. Both my wrists and forearms were liberally spiked with nettle stings by the time I had finished.

It was definitely a two tea cup problem. But now the bed is clear I can step back and admire and try not to scratch and yelp.

And it did mean that I could spend a good bit of time close to this lovely clematis that is finally deciding to grow up and out and do what clematis are supposed to do. Can’t wait to see it thrive over the next few years.

For the rest of the day I steered well clear of anything that could sting or bite. I planted grasses on the bank that abuts (is that the word I’m looking for?) the shade garden. Miscanthus sinensis Gracillimus as the top feature grass, and just the standard miscanthus sinensis in the second row.

And I don’t think you can see it in this picture but there will be a hedge of calamagrostis Karl Foerster along the bottom next to the path. They are sterile plants, upright and well behaved. So as soon as I get about a dozen more the effect will be stunning. Well in my mind’s eye at least.

Sunday? Sunday? Sunday? What on earth did I do last Sunday? So hard to remember when you have a list of garden tasks the length of one’s arm and a limited amount of memory in one’s hard drive. Oh, yes, I remember now. Just rootled about the photos folder and found some random pics.

I weeded the blackberry bushes. Once the soft fruit bushes were tidied and mulched, this part of the orchard looked decidedly scruffy. So I donned gloves and managed to get up all the nettles and other random weeds that were hiding underneath the bushes. Bit of a mulch from my newly filled wheelbarrow of muck. And then on with a session up at the potting shed.

I have sown pots of rocket and extra basil and two more cucumber seeds just in case the eight that I planted don’t make it through the season. Then I potted on the geraniums that I grew from seed earlier in the year. There are more than thirty of them which is a bit of a result.

They all needed a bit of a drink after their transplanting, so I zipped out to fill up the watering can from the four blue butts next to the shed. Distracted? Yes. My eye was caught by some weeds that seem to have grown up overnight right under my very nose. Up they came and then I decided to have a full tidy of this shade garden after the seedlings in the shed had their drink. Don’t the liatris now look good?

They were shaded by a large weedy mystery beast. But now can get on with putting on strong growth and hopefully flowering any month now. I want to put the extra agastache here next month. So the shade garden will almost get filled in with plants by the end of the summer. Full of perennials so there will be less work next year.

Then after lunch it was back down to the lower vegetable bed to get in all the spinach plants that are bursting out of their little pots. Here is the vast expanse of weedproof fabric that needs covering.

And here are the pots of spinach and extra beetroot that needs to go in. I don’t hold out much hope for the beetroot. I think it has been too long in pots and really should have been directly sown. But I didn’t so it will be an experiment to see if they amount to anything much.

It’s a bit of a leap of faith to imagine that this strange canvas of green and little bits of stalk are going to result to much. But the spinach ought to settle in.

And while everyone was out climbing, I took the opportunity to make an awful lot of noise by chipping all the vineyard pruning sticks that have been cluttering the parking area in front of the house. Tidy or what?

Now that’s what I call a path. Here is the fruit of Alice’s labours today. Nothing beats a house guest who actually wants to give things in a go in matters green.

Naturally the path didn’t start out that way. First there were weeds to remove, stones to pick up, soil to rake, and then grass seed to sow. But with the two of us working together the time flew. And here’s an action shot to prove the labour really went in.

But actually the main work today was even more tedious than this. All the kale and old leathery (and let’s face it bolted) brassicas have now gone from the path of the potager.

They have stalks as thick as one’s wrist, so needed a good bit of heaving to get them up.

Here is the mighty pile of the last of the year’s crop. Good eating here, and in fact others did help to strip the leaves and give us one last mighty meal.

And another most wished for task was to get the compost out of the bins and into the wheelbarrow and onto parts of the garden. Right now I still can’t bend my back with the spade and get any decent volumes of this black gold. So Alice went even beyond the calls of duty by actually climbing into said compost bin and getting the stuff out. Heroic or what?

And stand by for one of the world’s most dull pictures ever seen in a blog. Yep, it’s the ubiquitous slow motion action shot of a wheelbarrow full of muck.

But hey, at least it serves a mighty purpose. It went down lovingly between all the corn and beans at the edge of the potager and will hopefully feed and keep down the weeds. And then the carrots and the marigolds received their dose too.

I’m thrilled, and so too, hopefully are the plants.

The season officially opens today; well, we have had Sarah to visit in the early spring, but this is the first go at the guest house. So there was a mighty clatter of vacuum cleaners, dusters, mops and clean sheets. The main house scrubbed up well too.

And once that task was sorted I escaped to the cellar to bring out the mower. It’s such a fun toy: you get to create stripes and tidy up the lawns and all the while thinking you being very good by collecting the grass cuttings for the potato bed.

This is a before and after shot. The lawn looks a teensy bit scalped as I set the blades rather low. But it will recover I am sure. In fact I never cease to marvel at what a sturdy thing lawn grass is.

But in case you are tiring of the endless green, here are two pictures I forgot to upload a few days back. This is our very own room freshener. The purple wisteria growing in front of the main house.

It is kept very small and compact, but all you need to do is open the windows above it in the kitchen and the whole house if perfumed with scent.

And here are the iris in the potager that appeared this year. Tall of course as are most of the iris around this area. But at least they are sturdy and give good colour at a time of year when there is only weed proof fabric and sticks in the vegetable bed.

And not content with one noisy piece of kit, I did a bit of strimming as well. The path that leads up from the courtyard to the top road (tentatively called the walnut path as there are two walnuts planted along the route) is going to be messy and a bit wild this year. Well that’s the plan. I think there are too many nettles in amongst the wildflowers, so may just lose my good wild intentions and mow it to crew cut height. But right now this is what it looks like. Watch this space.

The path below the house is a mixture of strimmed and mown. Don’t look too closely at the peaches in a row above the path. They are sickly and peach leaf curled to almost oblivion. I have sprayed until my lungs protested, but I haven’t done much good. That will be a June project when Nicolas makes his long awaited return to pruning duties.

And to finish I found a place for the yard long beans: they have been planted in amongst the corn.

Right, time to change. My work trousers are so covered in lawn clippings I look like a shrub.