The following posts are actually emails sent in the form a diary which I wrote whilst taking the six week placement. I hope you get an insight into the work that goes into caring and managing a large public garden. I have attached a number of images which I hope will illustrate the atmosphere of the gardens of Villandry and the continuous hard work that is carried out by the staff who work there. It was a pleasure and honour to work there....even though my emails at times suggest otherwise!! Also apologies for spelling and grammer which can be put down to exhaustion at the time and the fact I was paying for internet use by purchasing the establishments alcoholic beverages!!
If you want to have a look at the official site for Chateaux de Villandry, here is the link. http://www.chateauvillandry.fr It helps understand the scale of the gardens and the referencing I make throughout my posts.
Chateaux Villandry
Date 15 August 2010Hi everyone!
Just thought id give you all a quick run down how my trip is going at chateaux villandry......althought it might be short as Im on a french key board where the keys are in the wrong place and where if I dont use the shift key for numbers I get this ...... &é"'(-è_çà!!! Anyway im staying in a 15 century gate house right beside the chateaux which is beautiful from the out side as you can imagine, but very student accommodation on the inside!! Not that im complaining, its free and its somewhere to sleep. Also due to its close proximatey to the chateaux gardens it is a bonus as we start at 6.30 in the morning! Normal day 6.30 until 12 noon, 30 mins for lunch then work throught to 3pm. Now however we start at 7am, so its not as bad.
The Bothy. My home for 6 weeks
The Potager
The Jardin L'amour; the garden of love, is an aray of large box hedges filled with at the moment red white or pink begonias. I believe in the spring they have tulips etc. Dotted around the box at the corners are taxus topiare.
Jardin L'Amour
I then was let loose with a Brendeleuse (which I think ive spelt wrong)...a petrol strimmer, going round the 1200 Lime trees which line all the avenues around the gardens. I then used the Tendeuse, which is the lawn mower and cut a sort of figure of eight in and out the trees and then a straight strip along each edge of the tree line. This is the most effective way and quickest way to cut the grass inbetween the trees. They then use a large sit on mower to cut the larger areas of grass.
The next thing we did......which is still on going is that we were let loose on cutting all the topiare...the topary. They use thin bladed hand shears to cut them and boy do I know it. It takes the gardener here working with us a day to cut about 4 to 6 trees.........day one I had achieved one and a half!!!! However I had done them well which was all they were interested in. I have since progressed to an average of 2 and a half and as there are 45 in the jardin de l'amour alone we have had our work cut out.....sorry about the punn! It has taken us the best part of 6 days for 5 people to cut all 45. We only have the medicinal garden and the the music garden to go..... amounting to something like another 50 or 60. I have started to suffer from that tendant injury when 2 fingers cramp up and lock....no pain no gain!!!!
Clipping topary; before and after by me!
This last week I was suffering from a sightly different ailment, that of not being able to stand up straight!! In amongst the potager are 16 beds about 4m x 2m each. They all contain basillica purpou ( which I also cant spell of the top of my head!) which is purple basil. Because the basill has been planted for its foliage colour and needs to last throught the whole summer, we have to coupe...sorry cut all the flower stems of each plant. If the plants flower, they go to seed and the plant dies. A simple exercise I thought.....its taken 3 people including myself 9 hours to clear just half of what there is to do. Working bent over with just a knife and a poubelle to throw me weeds in has been an interesting experience. My fingers look like they have been crushing red grapes for wine and Im constantly cleaning my secateurs and knife. Luckily for Ashley, he was assigned to another job, as he is 2m 40cm tall....on his knees hes virtually my height!!!!
Cutting Basillica purpurea flowers; before and after
Anyway, must go as Im paying for the internet by drinking beer in this hotel......ah vive la france!!!! Hick.....Take care everyone and speak to you all soon. I cant send any pictures as I cant download anything, but I will maybe put a presentation together on my return.....oh god thats the beer talking§
Love n best
A tout a leure .......also splet wrong I think
Monsieur Paul Johnson, jardinaire a Chateaux Villandry
See ya
29th August 2009
Bonjour, Bonjour!!
Comma ca va? Well, I have been here for 5 weeks now and to put it mildly I am bleaden knack'ad like!!! My body aches and my mind exhausted with communicating in french and going mad staring at the same 4 walls every evening. Not to mention I think Ashley and I have probably exhausted all conversation and are like zombies in 'Le Pavion'. Since my last update which I was slowly getting legless as I was paying the internet usgae by buying beers........which needless to say I am doing again, so watch how my gramma getss worse and worse!!!!!
What have I done. Well, I have cut lawns danced round trees with a strimmer, wrecked my fingers de heading Blue sage and weeding, weeding oh and did I mention the weeding!! I think I can almost describe which variety is most commonmy found in each area now, but I won't bore you with that......well actually there is a nasty little bind weed which crawls through the box hedging which when you chase to the ground where it is growing from you scratch your arms to buggary and then fail in your attempts anyway to pull it out as it snaps.....then all the little bits re seed ready for you to come back 2 weeks later to do it all again......and I should know as I got the same pattern of scratches this week that I got last trying to weed the same area of box!!!! Hmmm, enough of weeding.
I have spent the last week doing a job I hadnt done before and thankfully will not be required to do again whilst on my stay here. I think I may have mentioned in my last email that I was lightly weeding and cultivating with my fingers inbetween rows of seedlings in a seed bed outside. Back breaking work I thought......incredibly boring I thought, but I understood the benefits of doing it. Well from Monday to Thursday last week, I was splitting said seedlings which had now grown 5 times the size and potting up into individual pots about 8cm square and about the same in height (I'm sure there is a technical term for that size but i can describe it by how it fits in my hand......no really I can!) Between 4 people over the 4 days we potted up over 7500 individual plants!! I sware I can do the task in my sleep now... Grab pot, scoop compost, stick finger in pot, slpit of one seedling, stick in pot and press down with both thumbs and forefingers.........encore encore encore. Since discovered they are something called Myostii or something which I think is actually the french name and I believe a bedding plant of some description for either the garden of love or the flowering beds around the potager? Frankly, I dont care......I just know I aint getting a job in a nursery next summer!!!!
Mysotis seedlings; 7500 individually planted
As I said it is our last week this week and I have to say it has been an amazing experience. Its had its ups and downs, but it has taught me alot about how to design gardens with maintenance in mind and therefore just to make them all out of concrete and forget about plants all together!!
But I shall bid thee fair well and be off to my little piece of chateaux thats slowly turning me slightlmy mad!!!
Au revoir one and all
Monsieur Paul
xxxx .... for all the ladies
4th September 2009
Bonsoir mes amis!!!!!
D'accord, it's my last little entry to bore you with as apres six semaine of planting, watering, weeding, clipping, pruning, cutting and raking, I am finally giving my body a break and coming home!!! Never felt particularly homesick in my life, but now I am really looking forward to getting back to see me lovely wife and putting me fet up for oooer maybe five minutes. Then I suppose I'll have to get myself ready for the onslaut of second year of my degree!!!!
Since I last wrote to you all I have had quite a full packed week. For the first half of the week I ironically worked where I was in the first week of my trip; the potager; the vege patch......although this vege patch is undoubtably one of the best I've ever seen. A group of us basically weeded é sections of the potager both in and out of the buxus framework removing anything foreign at all. This included using posettes (a swan I think theyre called in GB) to reove the weeds in the gravel paths and well my fingers for the rest, which are looking a little sad at the moment! I also had to trim anything hanging outside or on the buxus. So there were pumpkin plants which with their nature act like ground cover vege and sprawl outwards. Due to the nature of the style of these gardens, everything is done for aesthetics. Therefore they simply use sheers and cut off anything out of place! One of the plants growing in a few of the beds was a chickory plant. I dutifully cut these plants back within the buxus edging and then scooped up all the wasted leaves and dumped them into the poubelle for the compost. Unfortunately for me I have now also learned that it seems the sapp from these leaves contains something that slowly burns the skin!!! I now look like someone has splashed bleach across my arms with lovely little blisters ready to pop!! De rien.....never mind.....its certainly something to write in my little book of useful gardening tips!
Anyway, later in the week after wrecking my fingers from weeding and burning my flesh on foreign natural chemicals, I was cutting lawns again. In blistering heat I carried the petrol souflage (Leaf blower) on my back and spent é hours blowing leaves away from all the bases of the trees into the middle of the lawn for the larger lawn mowers to pick up. However the weather is changing here and although scorhio scorchio......there is now wind. I blow leaves one way the wind blows them back again. Apparently later in the autumn they spend 7 hours; the whole working day to clear leaves and they do that every week. Something tells me they should just run with it and wait until they all fall off the trees, but hey. So after that strimmed all around all the trees and then rotary mowed around all of them too. It's quite satisfying but bloody knackering!!!!
And really, that was about it for my week, I dead headed roses and weeded a bit more.
Ashley and I did avoid being thrown in the moat as I think they simply couldnt work out how they were going to get me and all 2.4 meteres of Ash in at the same time........
they did however manage to through 10litre buckets of ice cold water over us instead to achieve the same goal.
Its been a fantastic experience into seeing how much work goes in to running and working a place like this.
I am very proud to be associated with such a prestigous garden.
See you guys soon
Au revoir et la vie est belle
Monsieur Paul (xxxxxxxx......for the ladies)
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