A Jardin Ouvert to visit in the Loire Valley: ‘I want it to be a proper garden fête’

We all know about the butterfly effect – how something tiny and insignificant can have a huge impact. 

Sara Poulin, when she was a teenager, played in the Youth Orchestra around her native Bristol. She had no idea that the schedule change, which saw them play abroad at Whitsun during the summer, would affect the course of the rest of her life.

It meant she was free to join her twin sister, Kim, a language student, on a working holiday in the Loire Valley. It was whilst ‘enjoying’ the rite of passage of many French teenagers – ‘castrating the maize’ (castration de maïs), the hot, dirty job of removing flowers from the corn to prevent cross pollination – that she met and fell for the farmer’s son, Pascal Poulin, in the corn field. Reader, she married him.

She has now lived in France for more than 40 years, has raised three daughters and has a Parisian granddaughter. She still plays her cello, teaches music (piano and singing) and runs a choir.

This teaching led, by chance, to her wonderful house and garden in the pretty medieval town of Beaugency (Loiret), ‘upriver from Blois and down river from Orléans’. One of her students won a place at a prestigious institution in Paris. Her parents decided to move to the city to support her and offered Sara and Pascal the chance, in 2010, to acquire the longère attached to the watermill.

Constructed from outbuildings of the mill, the house has ancient origins. The garden has a stream through it – created when the water was diverted from the mill for repairs – and the part they open stretches to 5,000m². There is also a wooded area.

The garden became a passion project for Sara and Pascal when their daughters left home. It filled a void for both of them when they became ‘empty nesters’. 

“It was something to focus on,” Sara remembers, “It was good for us, it gave us something creative but also a physical activity. There was just one plant when we started. The soil is excellent and, dig down 30 centimetres, you’ll always find moisture. We don’t need to water. Now we have big lawns and borders. Pascal has made little bridges over the stream. The garden is like us,” she pauses, laughing, “a good marriage of French and English.”

A peaceful garden for visitors

Sara tells me the gardens have a romantic feel with billowing roses and clouds of cosmos. “We don’t really do straight lines. We go for a softer approach.”

Her daughter, Maxine, who lives in Alberta in western Canada, is going to have her wedding in the garden in August this year.

 “Won’t it be wonderful? She wants yellows and purples and white,” Sara says excitedly, running through some gorgeous possibilities for froth and fullness in her borders. “We have lots of plants from people we know. I propagate from cuttings and division.”

But wedding guests won’t be the only groups Sara and Pascal will have welcomed to the garden – they began opening for La Ligue Contre Le Cancer four years ago. 

“Pascal was diagnosed in lockdown,” Sara says quietly. “It was hard. The garden became even more important. It’s a very peaceful garden. We needed it. We needed the activity, the positivity. I want people to talk about the illness. We need to be open. Chemo is ongoing but Pascal still works in the garden, drawing strength and calm from it.

“Opening the garden was a good way to connect. And then I saw a documentary about children with cancer. I thought how much worse that must be. Therefore when I found Open Gardens/Jardins Ouverts supported lots of children’s cancer charities, I asked to be involved. I know our garden is not immaculately manicured. The plants spill over edges. We have lush jungly areas with huge gunnera, and other plants sprawl. It’s relaxed.”

Beaugency is on the GR3, a long distance footpath which follows the Loire 1,250 kilometres from its source in Mont Gerbier-de-Jonc to where it meets the sea at La Baule. “Lots of visitors come through our town,” Sara smiles.

Read also: Meet the volunteers vital to the growth of Open Gardens, and find out how you can join too

You are invited

Sara’s is the first Open Gardens/Jardins Ouvert event in her area. President Sue Lambert is really hoping that people who come to visit will get inspired and will want to open their own gardens next year. 

Sue would love people in this beautiful region to go to Sara and Pascal’s lovely garden, not only to enjoy a marvellous day out but to see how an open day works and to make contact with her.

She can be contacted at the organisation’s website or you can email her directly (suelambert.opengardens@gmail.com) to explore the possibilities further.

Sara has so many ideas for the Open Gardens/Jardins Ouverts day on June 29 that she is positively fizzing. 

“We will be open between 15:00 and 18:00 on the Sunday. I am so lucky; groups of friends will come and help me out. They bake and serve and wash up. I like to give the openings a real English flavour. So British! as the French say.

“There will be lots of tea and cakes. I get table cloths and pretty china tea cups and saucers from the Resourcerie in town – it’s a place where for just a few cents you can buy things to recycle/upcycle. I get some generous vases too – we will sell cut flower bouquets.”

Sara belongs to her local horticultural society and its 150 members will kindly donate lots of blooms. “It’s a busy time in the musical year – I am still working – so cut flowers rather than plants work better for me.”

Sara’s piano pupils will attend to provide a very special “sieste musicale” for a delightful extra pleasure as you sip your tea or stroll around the grounds.

There will be local artists exhibiting in the gardens too. The backdrop of the planting will provide the perfect foil for paintings and sculpture. 

“I want it to be a proper garden fête,” she says emphatically. “We will have a tombola – I will ask local shops and businesses to support us with prizes. And there will even be donkeys,” she adds. 

The donkeys are from Pascal’s family farm where this story began four decades ago.

Visit the garden at 4 Rue du Pouet de Levrault, Beaugency from 15:00 - 18:00 on 29 June.