Trees and Shrubs

Fir trees smell nice when the weather is hot. They provide shade. But unfortunately they produce mountains of needles and those needles will just lie there forever. That's why we removed the fir trees around the house, but we left the trunks or or part of them. One serves as a base to a bird feeder, two others support a rose.

Rosa mutabilis is wonderful in this climate. It is hardly ever affected by aphids and is not sensitive to any diseases. It blooms from the end of April till winter arrives. The flowers are yellow/salmon first and become dark reddish pink in the end.

Two drawbacks: it needs some support and it has hardly any scent.

The other one is Rosa banksiae lutea. It is a fast growing, pretty little rose virtually without any thorns. Flowers in May with a great show of small, pale yellow, powderpuff flowers. I am thinking about buying a similar rose whose flowers are single, white and perfumed. This type of rose is quite resistant to drought.

I bought rosa banksiae lutea just at our local garden center. There is a very good nursery though in Mèze - between Montpellier and Béziers on the North East side of an inland sea - Phillipi. Their catalogue is really good and useful and at their nursery they give excellent, knowledgeable information. They have a large collection of cistus, oleander and lavender and hundreds of other attractive plants suitable for a hot and dry climate.

I bought this lovely melianthus from Gill - see below - with its large pleated gray leaves, its lovely shape and, most important, its ability to withstand hot and dry circumstances. When winter is over it may have look a little bedraggled but some trimming will work miracles.

More interesting plants may be found at Gill Pounds 'la petite pépinière de Caunes'. Gill is a British nursery woman and grows her plants in Caunes, near Carcassone. The easiest way to contact her is by e-mail to start with: Gill.Cei@wanadoo.fr. It is bothersome for her to be phoned as her nursery is at a distance from her house. If you take the trouble of keeping this in mind she is quite willing to take care of your wishes. She kept a Digitalis obscura waiting for me for something like 6 months ... Try to visit her nursery at the end of summer: she grows a Dahlia imperialis in her private garden which is altogether spectacular. Some 3 or 4 meters high!

A wall with a gate is at the entrance to our house. It is not a very pretty wall. They put the thingummy for the EDF (= local electricity company) box on the street side in an awkward position en the wall itself was ugly as well. It was stuccoed and painted. Which improved its looks. Our gardener is a great landscapist: he offered the suggestion: cover the inside with something like chicken wire and grow climbers on that side which will tumble over the wall eventually. That's what we did.
We planted Solanum jasminoides, one of the best fast growing climbers available. It starts flowering in April and will continue right into winter with clusters of pale mauve to white 'potato' flowers; then muhlenbeckia whose second name is unknown to me.

	In my opinion it is a pretty climber which deserves to be planted far more often. Its only fault is becoming a bit intrusive. Its leaves are quite small, no more than one centimeter in diameter and more or less round. In late summer queer, unobtrusive, waxy, cream flowers will appear. The plant's merit is its fresh looks and its habit of growing through other climbers like ivy which gives those an airy aspect. Muhlenbeckia needs some support to start with and drops its leaflets in winter. It is easily kept in shape by trimming.
In their catalogue Philippi mentions Muhlenbeckia complexa with dull green leaves , but the leaves of this one are shiny.	full sized flowers

Other climbers used on this wall are unsurpassed Trachelospermum jasminoides, which has evergreen, glossy leaves and perfumed white flowers in early summer, a variegated ivy (which I may eventually regret ...), an also variegated honeysuckle: Lonicera 'Harlequin', a few short lived pink flowers matching the leaves magnificently and two more climbers which need some directions for use.

I bought the first one as bignonia. Surely of the campsis family but its flowers are floss candy pink with faint lines in its throat. The first year only few flowers appeared, but its stem grew to be quite thick at the start of its second season and subsequently flowered quite well from September onward. Then we had a nasty winter, never ending lots of wind from the cold mountains and real frost reaching -8 one night. Bignonia appeared not to have survived. But quite late in spring suddenly young shoots grew from the 'souche' = that part of a plant that is under the ground and those shoots rapidly grew to some 4 meters or so. Ko had to build a kind of trellis because they got to be too LONG. In his book Pierre Cuche calls it Podranea ricasoliana. It is 20th September today and the buds are promising: I shall take pictures as soon as the flowering begins.
The second is called Pandorea jasminoides. An amusing fact: podranea and pandorea are anagrammes (this word does not occur in my dictionary, I'll have to ask someone ...) They are quite alike, the same leaf shape, the same kind of flowers. Pandorea is - in my opinion - quite a difficult plant. Possibly it is not warm enough in this area. It flowers in spring, white flowers with a wine red throat, pretty! This pandorea had trouble surviving the winter, but showed up in late spring, too late to bloom. It did not grow taller than one meter and a half, so I am a bit worried.

A lovely hedge
!! The French law: plant your hedge at at least 50 cms from the outward boundaries and don't let it grow any taller than 2 meters.
Seen in this neighbourhood: a hedge made of hibiscus bushes. In Holland I don't like hibiscus all that much because its finished flowers turn into squishy lumps in the rain. Here they just dry out and don't bother you. The same goes for leaves: they drop and dry. No juicy food for worms like in our wet country. Maybe that's why you rarely meet a worm when poking around in the earth ...
Hibiscus guarantees a never ending amount of festive flowers. One friend in Holland always counts the number of flowers from her one white flowered hibiscus bush. Over 7400 in 2005!!!

Abelia grandiflora grows well in the more northern parts of Europe. Here it does better. It flowers forever from July to October at least. It is not a very showy kind of shrub, rather one with misleadingly delicate looks. It will grow to about a meter in height in just a few years and will eventually be 1.50. You might use it for a lovely, loose hedge.
You often see pyracantha hedges. Such a hedge will stop a dog, thick growing and full of nasty thorns. Its flowers have an unpleasant smell. Yet all this will be made up for by its large quantities of orange, sometimes yellow, berries from September onwards. Blackbirds and starlings love them. Unfortunately you do not come across blackbirds all that often. They are probably hunted and eaten, French style ... There are not that many starlings around either. I love a free growing pyracantha hedge in autumn.
The French are opposed to people planting pyracantha as it may be susceptable to fire blight as are cotoneasters. Source: Mediterrenean Gardening.
Also a hedge made of Teucrium fruticans is delightful. Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum' has darker flowers but will grow to lesser height, around one meter maybe, but I might be mistaken. This bush has attractive silvery leaves and allows unlimited pruning. Moreover the flowering season is quite long from spring to summer and after the summer break some more. I prefer the loose hedge over the shorn type whenever a hedge bears flowers.

I am not a professional photographer so these pictures are not much to look at. I will replace them as soon as I can ... On the left the abelia. On the right pyracantha tightly shorn, in the middle its free form. I do appreciate straight, well cut hedges: yew hedges for instance, wow! I never saw them here, but I do adore them. I would not mind to have an ordinary conifer hedge either, Cupressocyparis leylandii I mean. I do hate little box hedges but that's a matter of taste. In my opinion shearing and flowering or bearing berries don't mix so if I would trim I would only do so when the bushes in question are not in flower.
Seen once: a low rosemary hedge. Nice!

	*Arbutus unedo*, - it's called strawberry tree in Dutch - is a common native bush around these parts. An evergreen which may grow into a small tree. At some time of the year it is prettily decorated with both flowers and fruits though the two in our garden bear fruit with just one flower and flowers with just one fruit ...
The bush on the left was present when we came here but completely hidden from sight by the ever present ever hateful kermès oak! A nice surprise, but it took me days of hard labour to provide it with the attention it deserved, for it is at its loveliest when used as a solitary bush. It has now had three years of freedom and has become quite beautiful. Next year it will behave as it should: flowers and fruits at the same time. The one on the right I brought from Holland with my first choice of bushes and it has done well. The fruit is suitable for consumption, but rather made into jam or something than raw when it may cause problems to your stomach.

I always thought that plants with urn shaped flowers - gaulteria, enkianthus - need acid soil, so you would not expect arbutus to do so well here.

Last week I spent a few days in Holland. 30th October, gorgeous weather. So I had a long walk through my native town and saw Viburnum tinus in full bloom.
This is a native bush in the Languedoc and is called laurier tin. But here it will flower in spring, March onwards, maybe earlier in a mild winter (which we have so far never experienced yet ...). At the moment 3rd November, it is covered in buds with the odd dark blue berry still among them. You can do a wonderful winter arrangement from these combined with Pistacia terebinthus (should not it be terebintha?), which has lovely purplish leaves in winter. With a bit of luck your bush will have pink berries in summer, but - unfortunately - no delicious pistachio nuts. I suspect the pink berries are only given to female bushes!

	Today is November 22nd. October has been too wet, November is quite cold. The weather is radiant though. *Viburnum tinus*, as indicated above, is full of buds, but there is one headstrong fellow abundantly blooming!!!
*Podranea* - on the right -is still in flower just like the alstromerias.

30th November. So far it has been a pretty unpleasant fall. A lot of rain in October which is usually a lovely month and a lot of cold in November. But mimosa has been spotted already.
Its flowering lasts for a long time. The one on the photo is down in the village, always the first to start. At my neighbour Gilbert's the next one comes a little later. Last one is at Odette's, more or less opposite our house.
Yet it is the same tree: Acacia dealbata. They are lovely, but a tree to be warned about before planting. It will produce a lot of runners and them very strong!! It is not such a good idea to plant close to your house.
There is a lot of variation in the colour of the leaves, sometimes just plain green, sometimes yellowish and sometimes blue grey and that's my favourite. It is not all that easy to get it going. I have been told you should plant it when in flower ... watering must be essential at the beginning.

I myself have fallen in love with: Acacia fimbriata, leaves greyish and large lemon coloured fluffy flowers. Seen for sale only once at 80 euros!! I have found somebody selling seed (in Australia) who is going to send me some one of these days. And on the internet I found a suggestion to keep the fluffiness in the flower when cut for indoors: cut the stem on an angle, put in boiling water immediately and cover with a plastic bag until the water has cooled down.

26 januari 2006 This winter has been rather cold, esp. in December. Nothing much happened during our long absence. But a little down the road there is a house with a now spectacular hedge of Viburnum tinus! Another great idea. As you may see it is still not really far gone in comparison to 9! weeks ago. I like them best at this stage. The leaves turn somewhat purple with cold and its flowers are only half open. Bees are busy with them though!
The mimosa which started flowering end of November last year has not gone any further: frozen!

The ones closer to our home are still in bud.!

I don't like - 26th January - winter jasmin, Jasminum nudiflorum much, but it looks cheerful in a bare winter garden. My neighbour sometimes prunes it back severely (left) but elsewhere she lets it grow freely (right). The bush does not seem to like growing upwards which makes it awkward to use. Unless you are able to build stone walls like my 80+ neighbour!! where it looks rather pretty.

The other day I found a long sought after camellia in a garden centre in Narbonne. This one is supposed to flower in late autumn, but the one I bought doesn't keep to the rules ... Its nearly full name is Camellia sasangua 'Kanjiro', also known as c. sansagua and the g may be replaced by a q if you wish. The flowers are not very large, 6 cms or so. The one I had before, in my Dutch! garden, was white, but I even prefer this one. Its complete full name, that's to say the addition for its colour like 'Marie Antoinette' or something, was not mentioned.
Camellias need more or less acid soil (terre de bruyère) a position sheltered from fierce winds and hates morning sun on her leathery leaves esp. after frost in the night. Should be kept slightly moist with preferably rain water.
I keep her in a pot so that she may be rushed into the garage when hard frost is expected, but just covering up with a bit of gardeners' fleece is sufficient if the frost is too slight to freeze the roots.

Chaenomeles speciosa 'Appleblossom' aka 'Moerloosii' should be put against a darker wall. I fell in love with her - can't be a him - on a photo against a brick wall combined with flowering peach coloured hyacinths. Isn't she gorgeous? I brought my bush from Holland as one of five allotted bushes ... She does not grow very fast, has just this year got quite a few flowers, so you need patience for this one. On the other hand chaenomeles does really well in this area, flowers early in the year and comes in lovely colours, oranges and reds mainly. They can be used wherever you wish, but look nice against a wall. This one is the yearly home of a fat female praying mantis showing up in July. Last year's Truus (as I always call them) left a huge 'egg'.

At the end of March things begin to happen. A small tree full of white blossom along the road is unknown to me, but peasant to the eye.

Right: detail.

Cronilla glauca - left - is one of the best shrubs for these parts. It flowers at the end of March for three or four weeks. It is a smallish bush with attractive bluish leaves and does not need any care at all, though you could prune it back a little once in a while. It self seeds as well and the seedlings will grow into mature shrubs in a few years only. On the right a delicate, lemon coloured variety offered by Philippi.

Cercis siliquastrum is called tree of Judas in the Netherlands. It is a native species that flowers in April and belongs to the leguminosa family. Interesting detail: the flowers are often right on the stems of the small tree or large shrub. Requires no attention, only enjoyment!
Its leaves are bronze at first, then turn a blue green. The tree has a nice shape.

At the end of April the time of the cistus is coming. It starts with Halimium halimifolium in this garden. Very closely related to cistus.

At Philippi's you can buy many, many different types. They are very good plants for this part of the world. You have to make them start, that's to say they need attention in their first weeks after planting, some watering too. Best time for planting is October, but best time for buying is May ...

With a bit of luck you can make cuttings. I always try!


*Cistus albidus* , a native. Albidus because of its whitish felt leaves.	*Cistus ladanifer* has sticky leaves. Its flowers are often eaten by beasties and will be decorated with small round holes!	*Cistus x purpureus* will soon grow into a large bush. Mine grew to one by one meter in just three years.	Cistus 'Barnsley Pink'.

*Cistus laurifolius* is a very strong plant. It grows here on top of the rocks in full sun all day long!	Detail of its flower visited by all kinds of beetles and things.	By far the best known is native *Cistus monspeliensis* which does not need any care at all. It is not a plant with a long life though.	The subtle creamy colour of *Cistus monspeliensis f. flavescens 'Vicar's Mead'* makes it to be my nearly best loved one!

A flowering ordinary Cistus monspeliensis is a lovely thing. It does not ask for any attention either, but as mentioned before, it does not live long. I wonder if any pruning changes this fact.

On the right an app. one year old, and 20 cms tall seedling of spartium which is discussed below. When younger they have more leaves. Pull them out as soon as you find them if you don't want them everywhere. Later on it becomes rather difficult as they have a very tough taproot.

When Spartium junceum is in flower the whole area smells like heaven! There bare branches - hardly any leaves - are not very attractive if you let them become tall, so it is a good idea to saw the whole plant off once in a while to make it have a good shape.

Time for oleander! Nerium 'Angiolo Pucci' is one of my favourites. Unfortunately it has no perfume to speak of. It does not grow higher than 1,25 m. For its smell I love Framboise', dark rosy red, always a great colour in the garden like creamy yellow and lavender. I also have great expectations of 'Barcelona' which is an unusual colour between lilac and pink.
Very easy to make cuttings! See that part in the various department.
Philippi has many oleanders to choose from.

Two lovely climbers: first right Trachelospermum jasminoides which has a lovely perfume and flowers from the end of May . You can already see that the tiny leaves of muhlenbeckia, discussed earlier, will cheer it up when the flowers are finished.
Solanum jasminoides is a strong grower. It flowers from May right to the end of October but lacks the lovely perfume. Also in pure white. This one died in a very dry summer.

When we first had this house I asked a local gardener, Daniel, actually more of a landscape person, to help me do the things in the garden that I could not do myself and advise me on how to do them. I came to like him a lot! With his pipe and his funny thoughts once in a while. His idea for getting rid of the hated kermès oak was: dynamite!
The wall in front of the house was as ugly as you can think of. A mason plastered it and my husband put up a lattice: Daniel's idea was to cover the wall from the inside and allow the plants hang over at the outside. Which we did. This part of the garden, by the way, is watered regularly.
A.o. I planted a tiny muhlenbeckia, trachelospermum, a variegated ivy, honeysuckle and a podranea which does not show up before May, but reaches two meters in four weeks!The ivy of course grew fast. It is already huge and needs pruning now and then.
In the picture you see on the left at the back muhlenbeckia and growing through it trachelospermum, planted 3 1/2 years ago.
in front of it an unknown rosy pink oleander, 'Framboise' is still small and won't flower yet; the yellowish stuff is parsley which I love for its taste ànd for its lovely flowers; geranium endressii somehow found its way into this and grows through salvia 'Scarlet Pineapple'. The last one will not flower until after the summer break.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood I saw a loose hedge of oleanders in various colours most of them with simple flowers. Quite lovely.

Isn't she gorgeous? It is rather difficult to take a good picture of her colour, but in the large photo it is more or less right. She is called 'Barcelona' and is available at Philippi's. She starts flowering in the middle of June.

In the far right photo you can see she is growing with Saponaria officinalis, a common 'weed' and Allium sphaerocephalum which I am still in doubt about as it looks suspiciously like the wild alliums that I have been trying to eradicate from the garden ...

Bupleorum fruticosum more or less grows anywhere in the wilds here. I consider it a valuable plant as it is modest in coloration so it blends well with about everything, it has no needs in respect to fertility of the soil or water and the flowers are excellent for arrangements.
It is always difficult to do but cutting it right to the bottom produces a lovely full bush. Like the spartium (broom) mentioned above it self seeds well. As I love it I have never yet tried to pull one out.

In my neighbour's garden grows a lovely tree called Albizia julibrissin. My gardener told me it was a disaster as its fluff would appear all over the house, but I have never found any even in my garden. Yet it is not very far from our place! Its shape is lovely, African = umbrella. The unusual second part of its name is derived from Persian and means soft silk. There is also a more pink flowered one.

September 5th Rosemary is such a common bush in these parts that I have so far hardly ever mentioned it. Lately we were ordered to clean up our land to prevent fires. It means that I have to take out a great number of old bushes, often rosemary which stops flowering when old. This is a lovely creeping form Rosmarinus officinalis repens. It flowers twice a year - spring and fall - and some more in between, like the felicia growing in it on the left, but barely visible. The wild yellow verbascum on the far left also has a long flowering period as has the bright blue ceratostigma: this one starts in July and will go on till even November.

October 16th Autumn is usually quite beautiful in these parts. The vineyards however were, I think, this time subjected to one night of frost and became sadly brown and withered. Most years they show glorious colours, reds and yellows and purples. Fortunately the Virginia creeper is more beautiful than ever. Its Latin name is Parthenocissus tricuspedata. This is a climbing bush you have to think long and carefully about before planting as its multiple 5 fingered greedy hands will cling to your walls and are very difficult to remove! It is also a very fast grower. Much like ivy. The tree on the left is lagerstroemia, a bit stiff in shape but with a long flowering period in July/ August when there are not so many flowers about. Mostly pinks.

March My neighbour gave me a sprig of a kind of apple tree some years ago. I have never been able to find out its Latin name. I planted it in a very poor spot which is rarely watered but it seems to be thriving. It flowers well and after that the small reddish apples are eaten by blackbirds and thrushes, occasionally seen in cold winters.
Last winter was a typically warm so there were no blackbirds and the apples are still there though it is nearly in flower. Unfortunately the lovely combination of budding flowers and last year's apples does not show well against the background of reddish soil.

End of August. Only a few more days and the second 'spring' will start. Let's pay some attention to Pistacia atlantica. I don't think much of it in spite of the fact that it is a tree often mentioned in the Bible. I don't like its shape, it is untidy and in winter it drops unappetising clumps of ? But!! It supports horrible droughts and is indestructible. Its leaves are quite nice, a pleasant shade of blue green on reddish branches.

In September however there are a few blue or pink berries on the tree which seem to be a delicacy to many birds.
I have seen quite a few youngsters of quite unusual birds whose name I don't know in English, sorry, one being a flycatcher, dark with white spots in the wings.

In one of my neighbours' garden some medlar trees are in full bloom.
What a gorgeous tree: its flowers are 4 cms in diameter white flushed with some pink. Each flower stands on its own. It is end of March 2008. They are done in only a few days, but quite worth attention! It is the first time though I see them covered in so many flowers. Mispelus germanica.

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