Floral and solar ways to light up your French garden after sundown

One of the great pleasures of living in France is being able to eat outside. The fact that we only managed a lunch twice and no evening meals at all in the garden in Yorkshire in the summer of 2007 was the catalyst for us to finally make the move south.

Here we can often lunch on the terrace in the winter months but, in the summertime, most meals are eaten al fresco. The still warm, sometimes sultry, evenings are darker than earlier in the summer. Now is the time to think about the night garden.

A white palette 

How we see colours is affected by the light levels and at dusk some colours virtually disappear whereas others seem to glow. Dark purples and deep maroons vanish from sight but pale blues like plumbago seem to intensify and almost emit light. 

Colours I don’t much care for in the sunshine like the acid yellows and the lime greens of Alchemilla mollis flowers are softened and become prettier. But the stars of the night garden are the white flowered and the silver leaved plants.

A White Garden as a conceit became very fashionable in the UK after Vita Sackville West’s famous one created at Sissinghurst in the post war years. 

In more recent years in France, the idea has become more popular with the gardens at Eyrignac adding a Jardin Blanc in 2000. There, the masses of white roses contrast with a red lacquered pavilion and bronze sculptures. It is for the day time.

Sackville West wrote that when the palette was restricted, the gardener had to focus on creating drama by using form and texture. She used grey mounds of Cineraria maritima (silver ragwort), Santolina (cotton lavender) and achilleas. I assume that all were kept clipped to prevent the yellow flowers. She added spires of white delphiniums, foxtail lilies and foxgloves along with great trumpets of white lilies.

Her husband, Harold, found white gladioli, irises, pompom dahlias and Japanese anemones – these last I have in my own white bed, Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’.

It’s a wonderful plant which is easily propagated and looks quite magical by moonlight. It puts up with most of the worst of the summer days – it got a bit crisped one particularly blistering summer but came back as the temperatures cooled. The flowers, held on tall stems above dark mounds of foliage, seem to dance in the moonlight if there’s a gentle breeze. They twirl alongside graceful white gauras, their small white flowers waving the length of their arching stems.

Huge white Oriental poppies will give dramatic shapes and one of my favourite hydrangeas, H. Sargentiana’s lacy cap flowering bracts with tiny touches of blue and pink just shimmer.

Floral fragrances 

When planning a night garden, you must remember to add flowers which release their scent in the dark – many of them are white. If lilies are trumpets then Brugmansia (Angel’s Trumpets) must be French horns.

Previously known as datura, Brugmansia is a South American native and is not frost hardy. Before I knew this, I left one in a pot out over winter. It didn’t come back the following year and the pot was left until I emptied it 18 months later. I found a fleshy root which I repotted and it grew and flowered and was nicknamed Lazarus – I don’t recommend this method of cultivation though.

Bare-roots can be bought in supermarkets in late spring and potted up like dahlias. At the end of the season, keep in a light frost free place and water sparingly.

Gardenias whose heady perfume made them a number one choice for 1950s prom corsages can be hardy if you find the right varieties.

G. Kleim’s Hardy, G. Swan Princess and G. Summer Snow all have gorgeous scented blooms, dark green foliage and will tolerate down to -18˚C. They need an ericaceous compost so mine stay in pots as I do not have an acid soil.

Magnolias – not the showy springtime ones, over in a fabulous flash, but the grandiflora – are statuesque trees with large dark green leaves and enormous elegant flowers. The flowers slowly unfurl, just a few at a time over the course of the summer. Their almost lemony perfume is exquisite and the huge blooms are magical by moonlight.

Solar-powered light features

Consider lighting for your night garden. In my view, electric uplighters with a searchlight beam are best left to public parks and stately homes. Apart from disrupting the rhythm of the creatures which share your night garden and being expensive to install safely and run, they are too bright and cancel out your carefully created look.

Choose instead solar lights. I have glass globes which float above the lavender and nigella that line the drive, hanging from steel shepherd’s crooks which were originally bought for a Covid-cancelled wedding. They glow like planets in the velvety dark as my husband and Iris the dog do their nightly perambulation.

Strings of solar fairy lights which emit about as much light as a glow worm’s tail will allow you to see the bugs if you’re lucky enough to have any in your garden. ‘Paper’ lanterns which have solar run LEDs remind me of Impressionist paintings and can be hung from branches or under arches as long as their solar panels can ‘see’ adequate light to charge during the day. Solar downlighters can be placed by steps.

Now is not the time to start planting – relax and dream about turning part of your space into a night garden.