When, in 1988, Jean-Louis Robert moved to Durdat-Larequille in Allier to take up his post at the Lycée Agricole as a teacher of horticulture and botany, he and his wife bought a house with just 600 square metres of land.
Very soon after, they realised they needed more and bought a hectare from the local farmer.
Forgotten fruit trees
For a while, Jean-Louis just worked on transforming half the field, leaving the other in production. “I like to plant small,” he says. “Things grow better, eventually. It’s cheaper but it takes time.” He smiles. “I am still planting now, all the time. I hope to be planting until my very last breath.”
JL Robert
And what he is planting, often, are trees. Jean-Louis is extremely knowledgeable about trees and has written a book, Incroyables Jardins de Néris les Bains, about the nearby abandoned Parc des Chaudes. In his own garden, he is creating an orchard with many forgotten, historic local varieties of fruit trees.
He propagates and grafts, he buys in from specialist nurseries and he receives swaps from friends and colleagues. “I have an Armistice Cherry, from around 1918,” he tells me. “There was only one left. We have saved it. I have a friend at the Conservatoire, together we are keeping the old varieties going. I like hybrids too – Apricot Peaches are delicious – and unusual things. I have an Aronia (a chokeberry) that my friend gave me. An asminia triloba – otherwise known as a PawPaw – grows here happily.
“So do Sichuan peppers and carya (the pecan tree). My sister lives in Zimbabwe – she has pecans so I brought some back and propagated them. Two years ago we had the first harvest of nuts!”
Jean-Louis loves to propagate but not just trees. When we spoke in late winter he had been rescuing chrysanthemums from the village cemetery dump. “Chrysanthemums are magnificent garden flowers,” he asserts.
“So much colour, for so long, just as everything else is fading. We have got used, in France, to seeing them as disposable, just for Toussaint, to decorate tombs. They deserve a place in our flower beds.”
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JL Robert
Since his retirement, the garden continues to grow and expand. The other half of the field was long ago assimilated into the garden. Flowerbeds have been created, planting pockets, hedges, and walkways and Jean-Louis fills his beds with perennials and shrubs. He has a pond with aquatic perennials too.
He had not considered opening the garden until he met a Dutchman from Herisson. “He was a colleague of my wife’s and his daughter had been my student in plant production. We got talking and I opened for the first time in 2024.”
JL Robert
‘Country style’ garden
A visitor to the garden last year was Marie-Claire Lebourg, who had previously had her garden open but was on a hiatus. Marie-Claire had attended Jean-Louis’s lecture on the Parc in her hometown of Néris-les-Bains and had seen him at her Qi Gong classes. This year they are opening on the same day as their gardens are just five minutes apart.
Marie-Claire and her husband also started their garden in 1988 when they bought their house. The total area is about 3,500m² and is packed with Marie-Claire’s favourite plants. She’s very self-deprecating. “I am useless at growing from seeds,” she asserts. “I don’t know why.” She admits, though, she has no problems with cuttings – particularly roses – and planting.
She describes the garden as “country style” with over forty varieties of old roses. Her winter project this year was redoing the supports on the climbing roses. “My husband died four years ago. He used to do those things for me. The wooden structures didn’t last. The bases get wet in winter and rot, the wind destroys them. It was a nightmare so this year I had the blacksmith come and the bases of the metal arches are now cast in concrete – the roses will be secure now!”
She has a magnificent Himalayan Musk rose. Its scent fills the garden. It flowers just once a year. “With a bit of luck it will be flowering when I am open,” she says, “But who knows? It will depend on the season – it’s around then, maybe we will be lucky.”
MC Lebourg
“When we started the garden, it was little by little. I didn’t have a plan to begin with – I added a flowerbed here, a path there (which then needed to be flanked by more flowerbeds). I have a hot bed (fiery colours of reds, oranges and yellows), white beds (although now there are one or two pinky purple foxgloves in them which I leave because they are so pretty), a bed of pinks and purples and then another bed of dark leaved shrubs.
“I have a bed of black irises with red valerian. I love that combination but I am very fond of the different blue irises too. You have to give plants what they want, it’s quite dry here so my hydrangeas didn’t do very well but H Annabel and the oak leaf hydrangea are beautiful – I put up a parasol for Annabel if the sun is too strong,” she laughs. “I have a Cornus Kousa I have to mollycoddle. I have planted a Carpenteria – a tree anemone.”
If something isn’t happy where it is, Marie-Claire will rethink the planting. “I moved all the peonies – they’re now together in the sunshine,” she chuckles, “I am looking forward to seeing them all in flower, a floral explosion.”
She is continually rejigging and remaking. “Five friends came to help me. We made a little terrace, laying slabs, adding grasses in a crushed slate bed with a statue I bought from a local artist. I have ordered another – a jizo (a Taoist guardian deity of the earth) – I will create a little corner with acers and azaleas in pots, a touch of Japan for that space,” she adds.
She has a wish list of plants she’d like to add. She uses nurseries and online suppliers such as Promesse des Fleurs but is not so keen on garden centres. She loves to go to plant fairs and flower markets. It was at one such fair – at the La Sedelle Aboreteum – that Marie Claire met Susan Lambert from Open Gardens/Jardins Ouverts and the idea to share her garden was launched.
If you would like to visit both Jean-Louis’s and Marie-Claire’s gardens on June 1, full details will be on the Open Gardens/Jardins Ouverts website.
The €5 Day Pass can be bought at either garden and will be valid for both. Or you can purchase Annual Membership through the website before you go and take advantage of the many other opportunities to visit beautiful gardens this season.
