Visit an English-style Allier garden

Life doesn’t always take the path we have plotted. As John Lennon sang, it’s what happens when we are busy making other plans. In 2001, Amanda Leroy and her husband Guy Thouroude were getting on with life after raising two children in their native Somme, between Paris and Lille. Amanda was a carer and Guy was a train driver. 

The household was busy. They decided to look for a little holiday home in the Auvergne, around Puy de Dôme. What they actually bought was a fermette (a small farmhouse) in advanced dilapidation, with no services and about 800m² of ground in the Allier. 

The next few years passed in a blur of renovations and a lot of hard work clearing and taming the land around them. The two of them really wanted to buy the attached parcel of pastureland. They envisaged the garden they could create, extending what they had made around the restored house. When they retired from their jobs in 2006, they decided to live in their fermette and moved to Beaune d’Allier permanently.

Just over three years ago, they were finally able to buy the pasture but, cruelly, before the garden could be started, Guy was diagnosed with brain cancer and
died after a brutal but relatively short illness, leaving Amanda alone after 54 years of marriage.

Grieving and numb, Amanda began to create her garden. She worked long days to assuage the pain. “When I do yoga, my head is still full,” she tells me. “When I work in the garden, I can become peaceful.” 

The garden became her solace and, eventually, her joy. “I didn’t have a plan as such. I started making flower beds. Lots of them. I like the English style. I love blue, pink and white flowers. I like to group plants by colour. I have flower beds of blues; I have white beds – I even have two black beds! 

“However, I know that the insects like red and yellow so I have made a bed for them too at the bottom. I absolutely love roses and hydrangeas. And perennials – so many different perennials. I have now cultivated half the old pasture. On the other half I want to plant trees – lots of trees. I have to buy big enough ones because, well, I am 73 already… I want to see mature trees.” She smiles; her enthusiasm is infectious.

“When Guy had died and I was making the garden, my friends and neighbours here came and just brought me their equipment to use or just did some work beside me. They sustained me without making a fuss about it,” she remembers. “My son comes to help me when I have projects,” she adds with a twinkle. “I like to animate the garden with structures or sculptures. We had two 50-year-old cherry trees that were not productive, very gnarled. We turned them into sculptures, with carved faces in the bark. People were amazed. 

“I like to upcycle old and interesting things. I have made labels out of old slate, I write plant names on them in white. I like crafts: sewing, painting, all sorts of handicrafts. My dad was a painter and decorator so I guess decoration has always been important. And I want a bit of extra drama. When people come to the garden, I don’t want them to see it all at once. I want some things hidden, to be revealed later. And surprises, I want surprises!” I ask where this comes from, whether she has done any amateur dramatics or anything. Amanda laughs. “No, not at all but I do storytelling for the children in the village. And, with a local association, we celebrate our local history with outdoor readings.”

The colours of Amanda’s finds – aged zinc with its soft grey patina and rusted terracotta-coloured iron – blend with the lush green leaves, silvery foliage and the froth of climbing roses which spill all over. 

Amanda’s creative talents have been given free rein but she practises restraint – this is not a brocante yard (antiques and bric-à-brac yard). The plantings are the stars of the show, the rest is just set dressing and props.

Amanda loves to cook so she has a potager (ornamental kitchen garden) divided in the traditional way with carrés (squares). “I grow the usual things like tomatoes, potatoes, herbs and aubergines. 

“This year I lost all my squashes – it got too hot too soon and then too cold. 

“Oh well, it will be ready for when I plant my winter vegetables,” she laughs, being philosophical. “You can’t control the weather and we had such ferocious heat so early this year,” she sighs.

Amanda gardens on clay. I know just how hard (literally, after months of sécheresse) that can be. “I mulch. I mulch a lot – to a depth of 10cm – and often, every two years or so. I buy it in bulk. I borrow a large trailer and I buy a thousand litres – that costs €36. Imagine how much that would be if I bought 50-litre bags! 

“I have a system. The first year I’ll put a fine mulch – it’s like humus, like soil. Then the next time it’s BRF, which is the residue of chipped branches, and then the third year I use chipped pine bark, which also acidifies the soil a bit – helps the hydrangeas. The mulch improves the soil structure, keeps in the moisture and adds nutrients. We get wind here – the mulch not only keeps in the water but it stops a hard crust forming on the surface. We’ve hit 50ºC here – I have to protect the plants and the mulch helps too at the other end of the year with the frosts. It can be extreme.”

Amanda has lots of places to sit in the garden: a catalpa is surrounded by a circular tree bench and enclosed by a clipped hedge. Guy’s original pergola had to be dismantled as it was rotting but they have replaced it with a new one to give a shady spot to sit and contemplate the plantings or just absorb the peaceful atmosphere. “My garden is a haven,” Amanda says. 

“It sustains me and I wanted to share it so I decided to join Open Gardens / Jardins Ouverts. I opened for the first time at the end of May this year and I am opening again on September 20. It was wonderful to meet all the people and for them to enjoy the garden.”

If you would like to visit Amanda’s beautiful garden this month, check the website for full details. It will give you times and directions and tell you how to become a member. Alternatively follow Open Gardens on Facebook and keep up to date with openings around the country.