Camaret is a small fishing village on the northern coast of Brittany, France, where a mild microclimate in this coastal region allows for an unusually large number of plants to thrive in local gardens.
It is impossible to pass this garden without stopping to admire the extravagant display of annuals, perennials, flowering and foliage shrubs, specimen plants, climbing roses, shrub roses, potted arrangements and water features.
A charming couple owns this house on the northern coast of France, and both are avid gardeners, changing and adding every year new plants, annuals from seed, and cuttings collected from fellow gardeners or just found during walks around the peninsula. They are in the process of redoing the vegetable garden in the back, but part of the front garden is dedicated to a home orchard of fruit trees, apples in several varieties, pears, and plums. Specimen shrubs and palms are underplanted with perennials, and roses are mixed into borders at every turn, or found climbing the walls.
This pleasantly flowered kitchen garden blends vegetable patches with roses and perennial borders and makes this functional space a pleasant retreat to sit and relax as well as work in the kitchen garden.
The owners of this lovely stone cottage in a picturesque fishing village on the Brittany coast in France, spend weekends and summers here. A few fruit trees and vegetables go on the table, and pink oleanders, sunflowers and perennial borders make for a pleasant setting to eat out in the garden.
Planted on a steep hill dropping sharply from the house to the street, this garden packs in a whole lot of greenery in a truly tiny space! The shrubs planted are low maintenance and also hold the soil in place on this slope. They include buddleia davidii, hebe, ceanothus, barberry, juniper and many more. Many are also blooming shrubs that provide color an interest spring through fall, in addition to all the varied foliage colors and shapes making this a charming setting for the house year round.
I am endlessly surprised and often delighted at the thought and effort French towns put into landscaping their roundabout. I will be writing other posts on more of those roundabouts, some with tropical plantings, other with cottage garden good looks. This is one is inspired by Japanese gardens.
Listed among France’s “Plus Beaux Villages de France” (most beautiful villages), Le Faou in Brittany puts out a display of stunning plantings and borders of shrub roses, cannas, silk trees, and many other shrubs and perennials. The mixed borders have the feel of a tropical garden.
Much like the Normandy region, Brittany, France is known for its apples. Countless varieties are grown in every garden of Brittany. This garden divided a small orchard from a vegetable garden area with a rustic wood arbor covered in vines. There is also a row of espaliered fruit trees hedging the side of the property.
Tis September and the season for pumpkins and assorted squashes that absolutely thrive in Brittany, France, and few vegetable gardens fail to have a patch of pumpkins spilling over. This one also has some rows of trellised tomatoes approaching the end of the growing season. Flowering shrubs hedges and a “flowered” wall covered in blooming groundcovers enclose the garden.
The elderly couple who owns the house tends this kitchen garden or “potager” as the French call it almost year round. Come September, a cover crop is coming out to replace the potatoes in the center patch, and fall vegetables such as leeks, pumpkin and artichokes still fill the garden. The marigolds at the end of the rows repel certain garden pests from the vegetables.
On the other side of the house, a row of kiwi vines, some over 30 years old, are trellised along the wall, and a garden bench offers a peaceful place to rest for a moment.
Globetrotting Gardener 