The September visit was the first since
February – the March, April, May and June visits were cancelled due to lockdown
and the club committee’s decision to suspend all club Activities until the end
of the club year. Later, garden group
members were canvassed as to whether they wanted their Activity to re-open and
of those who responded 75% were in favour.
We were 13 members for the visit to
Chateau Saint Roux just south of Le Cannet-des-Maures and the group was split
into a morning and afternoon visit to accommodate the “rule of ten” and had
lunch in the sunshine on the spacious outside terrace.
The chateau dates from the fifteenth
century when the land was bought by an Italian nobleman and the property named
for the dark red earth and rocks. The
chateau was acquired in 2015 by British businessman Mark Dixon and is one of
his four wine domains in the Var. After
two years of extensive renovations to both the house and various stone granges
and gardens the house was opened as an auberge in 2018.
Unusually the
garden was created in tandem with building renovations so the planting is no
more than five years old (all plants and trees supplied by Pierre Basset,
Cogolin) with ancient olive trees planted above ground with surrounding stone
wall and underplanted with thyme. The
rose garden to the side of the house is just two years old and a credit to the
gardener with their glossy green leaves and vigorously flowering floribunda
rose “Iceberg”. Metal pergola were
covered with climbing roses with some “mile-a-minute (roses not in flower, but
the “mile-a-minute” was smothered with white flowers). Dwarf pittisporum edged
the beds and we were puzzled as to why quite a few of these had dead vegetation
in the centre despite having access to the same soil and water conditions.
The entrance to the deep terrace in
front of the house is via a sand path bordered on either side with slightly
curved flower beds enclosed with rusted metal edging radiating from the path
which is lit by electric lights concealed in rusted mini-bollards (photo below). The planting here is pure Provençal
with a dash of Africa around the stone fountain (tall, sturdy papyrus). The Provençal mix is a blend of day
lilies (flowering again after the autumn rains), gaura, agapanthas, bright red sages – all interspersed with
herbs such as thyme and fennel (over two metres high!). I also spotted some white gaura the same
height and wondered what steroids it was on, then remembered the gardener
telling me that they used goat manure – always available thanks to the
chateau’s herd of 50 goats in the woods.
The walled vegetable garden with metal gates to keep out the wild boar covers 3,800 sq.m. The planting is in the shape of a leaf with all beds curved and edged in vertical tree trunks/ branches sourced from the woods – there is 4 km of edging ! The vegetables supply the restaurant and during the early summer you can order boxes of vegetables for collection on Fridays.
The gardens are irrigated with a
watering system of snaking brown pipes with nozzles for each plant. The annual work involved in removing calcaire
and soil from the nozzles is high maintenance and for those with young
knees, nimble fingers and good eyesight !
Three full-time gardeners are employed year round with numbers
increasing to five in the autumn for hand-weeding (no weedkillers used) and
re-opening the greenhouse (not used during hot Provençal summers) for
sowing seeds and potting-up cuttings.
To oneside of the vegetable garden was a
long wide avenue of olive trees underplanted with Stipa tenuissima
interspersed with Perovskia. Unusually Stipa, like Salvia, are
best planted in the spring. On the other side of the potager
the slope beside the path to the animals were more olive trees, this time
underplanted with Helichrysum italicum.
Circular courtyard through bell tower and arch and in front of Boutique with ancient olive tree underplanted with thyme; behind brilliant pink gaura flowering its socks off.
The goats were the first animals to arrive as the pasture is well away from the house and the noisy building works. Cheeses are made on site and sold in the Boutique. The ducks and geese occupy the large rectangular bassin behind the parking with the hens, guinea fowl, pony, donkey, more goats and four black sows (black Corsican pigs crossed with a French wild boar), behind the dependences. The sows had just farrowed so two-week old piglets were on show in the morning but most were taking an indoor nap during the afternoon. The crossbred sows had been mated with a resident wild boar (temporarily re-housed for the safety of the piglets) but again the Corsican DNA won the day and there were only four stripey piglets and the rest were black.
Ideas to take home : * metal edging to flower beds
* underplanting large olive trees with thyme or lavender or stipa
*
pots of ferns massed on open metal
hanging frame
* bark on pathways (but fine bark needs renewing every 5 years)
* massed stipa grasses are more effective than groups of three
