Some of us take time to put down roots. Those of us who have moved a lot in our lives often find it difficult to get established. Retired GP Angela Rowlands was born in South Yorkshire, grew up in East Anglia and worked all around the West Country.
After she took her pension, she decided to move to France, buying a property in Mayenne in 2015. She created a garden and then, fulfilling a long term wish, opened her garden to the public.
Enticing gateway to the path past the full bordersAngela Rowlands
“I had it in mind for ages,” she recalls. “I had wanted to do it in the UK under the National Gardens Scheme but it never happened. So when I had got to that stage with my new garden, I looked up French schemes and found Open Gardens / Jardins Ouverts”.
You might think that was the end of the story and that Angela has been opening every year since but, life, Covid and a fragile, elderly mother intervened. Angela pulled up her new roots and went back to the UK. Sadly her mother died.
France was calling again. Angela bought a little house with a beautiful garden, thinking she would have a second home. She soon decided that she wanted to be back in France permanently and the little house went back on the market as she searched for something bigger.
Moving to Mayenne
Angela found her new house in Lassay-les-Châteaux, a Petite Cité de Caractère (a small city of character – really quite small as this amalgamation of three villages boasts barely more than two thousand inhabitants). A former farm, built in 1946, took her fancy.
Most of its land had been sold off. There was still enough to play with: the front garden she has turned into a semi-formal rose garden with white and yellow roses under-planted with nepeta (catmint) and lavender. “I have lots of ground cover to keep down the weeds,” she smiles.
Behind the house and terrace is the middle section – a walled garden – and beyond that a field with wilder planting and trees. Her total garden space is now about an acre and a half and Angela has thrown herself into gardening more or less full time despite a dodgy wrist. Unfortunately the physician cannot heal herself and awaits an operation.
CosmosAngela Rowlands
Angela’s soil is a mixture. “Some parts are sandy and some are heavy but that’s okay. Where I was before was all sandy. I can grow more of a range of plants here. And watering is not a problem, I am lucky enough to have the original farm well on my property.”
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In the middle garden, when Angela arrived, there was a lot of spirea. “I dug them all out,” she remembers, “and then I planted them more informally in the field. In their place I made a gravel garden. I have filled it with salvias, irises and alliums. There was an impenetrable hedge and I realised it was a mass of overgrown shrubs.
“There were all sorts of lovely things – cornus, weiglia, cut-leaved choysia and viburnums – but they’d all grown together. I cut them back and separated them so each could be appreciated again.”
Angela is not frightened to move things if she realises she has made a mistake. “Along the garden wall I have four pear trees. I planted some roses too but they struggled. The wall was just too warm for them so they’ve come out now. I’ve put a kiwi in instead – it appreciates the heat.”
“I like to group things by colour – I love the combination of purple and orange. I have a bed of Michaelmas daisies and orange dahlias that works extremely well.
"There’s another bed which is pink and blue. I have put a road through the field. When the man with the digger was here I asked him to cut into the grass and now I have a bed with drifts of Michaelmas daisies and Helianthus Lemon Queen.”
Sourcing plants in France
I ask Angela, given she has made two gardens full of flowers in such a short space of time, where does she source her plants? She laughs. “Well, pre-Brexit, I had an old people carrier and I went to the Malvern Show.
"On the last day, after they ring the closing bell at 4 o’clock, you can buy beautiful plants for very little money. I had a friend in a wheelchair, we loaded her up over and over, and pushed the plants to the car. Then I brought about a hundred plants over.”
She smiles wistfully, “Can’t do that now. I buy from vide greniers (boot sales) and plant fairs. I go to a little nursery called Molly & Val’s at Torchamp.
DahliasAngela Rowlands
I do some propagating in the autumn, mainly roses and salvias. I don’t have a greenhouse. I have a couple of old shower doors which I lean against the wall. It works quite well, gives good protection over the winter.
I don’t sow seed in trays because of the lack of a greenhouse but I do sow direct. I really like unusual colours. I have some salmon pink nasturtiums and I love those dark bronze sunflowers. And I have some orange knifophias – red hot pokers but not red,” she grins. “They flower in September.”
Growing a wildflower meadow
When I talk to Angela in the spring, she is concerned about the wildflower meadow. “They are tricky to get right. I have sown a lot of yellow rattle to keep the grass down. I have never seen any yellow rattle but I raked it over and there’s not much grass.” She shrugs philosophically.
“I love those big hairy leaved sages, and ammi – like Queen Anne’s Lace. I adore poppies,” she enthuses, “I have recently planted a wild hedge: buckthorn, wild cherry, hazel, hawthorn – just all trees which would naturally grow here.”
Angela has made two gardens full of flowers in a short space of timeAngela Rowlands
They join the ranks of the other trees she has been planting – the Colorado Pine, Liquid Amber, rowan, twisted and ordinary birches and lime trees.
“When I came there was a giant old walnut, two apple and two cherry trees, I have added eucalyptus, black bamboo and a gunnera before I was no longer able to. They’re now on the banned list in France but I saw Japanese Knotweed on sale – propagating that plant in the UK is strictly illegal!”
Angela has “inheritance” plants too. “When my aunt died in 2015, I brought back her juniper. She was a biologist who did her thesis on juniper mites. And my aunt had my grandmother’s pelargoniums so I took them too. Every year I take cuttings from them to refresh them.”
Angela is hoping, season and wrist permitting, to open her garden in September. Full details will be on the Open Gardens / Jardins Ouverts website.
“Last year was great,” Angela remembers. “We raised about €500. This year we will again have teas and there will be a plant sale – plants I have grown from cuttings and plants donated by friends and nurseries.”
