by Mary Moody
When I first start chatting about gardens to the French, I realise they automatically presume I am talking about a potager, or vegetable patch. The average garden surrounding a house is seldom more than trees and lawn, and those trees are usually productive rather than ornamental. Walnut, fig and apples are all popular garden specimens because they look pretty and provide a yield for harvesting at some stage of the year. The main effort of gardening is directed into growing good things to eat, and everywhere I walk or drive I spot these potagers, small patches of earth supporting magnificent displays of tomatoes, salad vegetables, climbing beans, zucchinis and spring onions. Even in the larger towns there are potager gardens squeezed into odd sunny corners in the most unlikely places, and there are also allotments on the outskirts for people who live in apartments or townhouses. This preference for growing plants that are useful rather than decorative is surely a hangover from the days when people struggled to find food for the pot all year round. These days it looks like a land of plenty, but in times gone by the poorer farmers and woodcutters of the region did not have access to the wild game that is now so abundant, and therefore they had to ensure a steady supply of cultivated food. Growing food became a way of life, and it has remained the same ever since.
The gardens established by newcomers—the English in particular—always stand apart. The English have much more interest in developing wide beds and borders for planting collections of flowering ornamentals, and when you see gardens in this style dotted around the countryside, you know that they have not been created by farming families. Most of Jock’s friends can’t resist creating these English-style ornamental gardens, although they usually also try and incorporate a small potager or at the very least a herb garden for the summer months.
When the urge strikes me to potter in a garden I start by attacking Jock’s small courtyard, which is a shambles. Overgrown with weeds, the soil is impenetrable when I try and use a spade to dig over the area where he has in previous seasons grown summer vegetables. He doesn’t ask for my assistance, but it’s obvious he needs more than a little help knocking it into shape, and it’s the least I can do to repay his ongoing kindness. Before I arrived, he had planted a few tomatoes against the stone walls, but they are struggling now because of the weed competition. The main weed is a most unpleasant stinging nettle which I quickly discover brings me out in a red, angry rash. I will need gloves and long pants and plenty of patience.
I have a bit of an obsession about compost and I can’t abide wasting kitchen vegetable scraps by throwing them out with the rubbish. Jock does a fair bit of cooking and there are always plenty of peelings, so I establish a small compost heap in one corner, using the discarded weeds as a base. I first chop them up into small sections with the sharp end of the spade, then layer them with some manure that I scrounge from the roadside nearby. It feels so good being in an area where the essential ingredients of composting are so readily available. Prunings and weeds, manure and straw are all it takes to make a rich mound of fertile humus, and I take pleasure in watering the fresh heap lightly to start the decomposing process.
The ground is totally unyielding, so eventually I resort to using a crowbar to clear the area of weeds and hundreds of irritating small stones. Over a period of twenty years in my own garden, I have transformed a large sunny area into a lush vegetable patch by consistently layering mulches and composts on top of the fragile, sandy surface. These days I can slide a spade into the soil and it’s like cutting butter, so I find it frustrating to be working on ground that is so tough and unwelcoming. I stockpile the stones and later use them to create a small neat edging between the garden bed and the lawn. Jock and I trundle off to the Prayssac market to buy seedlings to fill the space when it’s finally cleared and level and weed free. Unlike Australian nurseries, where seedlings are produced commercially en masse and sold in small plastic punnets that hold ten or twelve young plants, the seedlings here are on display in large wooden trays so they can be separated and bought as required. This is a great way of doing things, because you can buy just a few of each vegetable variety at a time, and plant them successively over the season. I can plant a few zucchinis now, and in four weeks another two or three so that Jock can be harvesting well into autumn and winter. The range is a bit limited, reflecting the type of vegetables that are available in the market. Apart from several young zucchini plants, we buy English spinach, dwarf beans, and a variety of herbs including broad leaf parsley and chives. Jan, who has been propagating all sorts of wonderful flowering annuals and herbs in Claude’s pretty glasshouse, donates a good selection to our ‘Tarting up Jock’s garden’ cause. On the way back from Prayssac we stop off at the local nursery to buy a few bags of manure, then pause for a long lunch at Madame Murat’s on the way home. Needless to say I don’t feel much like gardening on this particular afternoon.
Being so small, Jock’s garden is transformed in no time at all, and he is delighted with the results. He tells all our friends he is doing me a big favour, allowing me to garden in his courtyard. ‘She’s obviously missing her garden. It’s the very least I can do to let her use mine.’
The days are long and hot and the garden flourishes. The soil that I had cursed when digging over the patch is obviously highly fertile, and the vegetables grow at such a rate that keeping up with the harvest almost becomes a chore. The zucchinis in particular are rampant, and Jock makes pot after pot of zucchini soup, to the point where we start to get sick of eating it. Some of the zucchinis grow to the size of marrows, and he is always trying to foist them onto friends and neighbours. Half the time he doesn’t make it down the back steps to check on the progress of the plants, and I find myself harvesting tomatoes and beans that have been left too long on the vine. Without constant attention the garden gradually becomes overgrown again, and I realise that I will need to tend it weekly if it is to remain under control. Perhaps it should have been paved over and turned into an outdoor dining room.
I also spend a happy afternoon in the garden of Jock’s English actress friend Pam. Twice widowed, Pam is now living in a new house that has been cleverly recreated in the old style, overlooking the ancient hillside township of Puy-l’Evêque. Pam was well over sixty when she decided to live full time in France and she has, unlike certain retirees, made a concerted effort to study the language and culture. She zips off to various formal language and conversation classes and spends a lot of time speaking French with Lucienne who encourages her tremendously. Meeting Pam and seeing that it is possible for an older brain to absorb all the things there are to learn gives me great hope that I too will eventually get the hang of speaking the language. I had almost reached a point of thinking my mind was too overloaded and addled for it, but Pam, quite a bit older than I am, proves you can assimilate on many levels. She joins in all the summer activities—antique sales and village meals—but also loves to spend time alone in her garden where she encourages birds by the hundreds to feel at home. Having been a professional actress in her younger days, Pam still has an air about her that is utterly disarming. Jock calls her a ‘lady, in the nicest sense of the word’. Now over seventy, Pam isn’t coy about her age, but she refuses to reveal it because of the prejudice sometimes directed against older women. She believes, and she’s probably right, that if people knew her age they would think about her quite differently. I wonder if when I am in my seventies I will encounter the same sort of attitudes.
Pam asks me for some help in constructing a raised bed in an area where plants have been failing to thrive. Her garden is built on a difficult sloping site, again with masses of rocks and stones right through the soil, making it extremely tricky to cultivate. The small amount of soil she has imported needs constantly to be retained or it simply washes away every time it rains. There are plenty of good chunky rocks for building up the edges of a raised bed and once again we head off to the local nursery to pick up some extra soil-building organic matter and some plants to fill up the newly created space. It’s fun looking at a
ll the different products and plants available in another country, but I realise that I would be stumped trying to buy a bag of potting mix or special purpose fertiliser because the labelling is so hard to interpret. Maybe I should start my language-building skills by concentrating on learning how to translate bagged gardening products.
Back at Pam’s, we nestle the new roses and annuals into place and water them in. I am amazed at how much she has achieved single-handedly on such a difficult site, and can only encourage her to keep on with it. My philosophy with gardens that involve a lot of physical exertion is to tackle just a small area at a time. If you start looking at the garden as a whole entity you can be quite daunted; many people are defeated before they even begin. But if you just chip away at a small square at a time you can, over several months or years, achieve a tremendous amount. The fact that so many hundreds of native birds visit Pam’s pretty garden on a daily basis, for food and water and nectar from the plants, is a testament to her success against the gardening odds.
One of the loveliest gardens I come to know belongs to Danny, a softly-spoken man who has restored a classic Quercy farmhouse, with a pigeonnier tower and spacious barn, into a holiday retreat which he rents out every summer. Danny’s partner Sue died unexpectedly of a cerebral aneurysm barely six months before I arrived on the scene, and he is still very much in a state of shock and grief when I meet him. He’s camping in the barn from June until September while the main house is occupied by holidaymakers. Born in France, one of six children, he was sent to live in England with an aunt and uncle at the age of six after the death of his mother. His siblings remained with his father in France, but he and his brother who were reared in England lost their native language. It’s not surprising, however, that he should end up living in the beautiful country of his birth, and he is much adored within the expatriate community as well as by his farming neighbours. Everyone tells me how well-loved Sue also was. She is affectionately described as a ‘real gardener’, because that was her particular passion. Over the years, while Danny worked away on the house restoration, Sue created the beautiful garden that made the entire property so appealing.
Danny shows me dozens of photographs of Sue taken in the last couple of years of her life. Her open sunny face beams out with such vivacity that I feel somehow as though I know her. Like me she was born in 1950, and would have celebrated her fiftieth birthday this year, here in their beautiful farmhouse, with Danny and all their friends around her. Now she has suddenly vanished, leaving Danny and the garden to survive alone. Naturally it’s become overgrown during the summer and there’s a real risk that it will get totally out of control. Having worked briefly in Jock and Pam’s stony yards I can appreciate just how much back-breaking work Sue must have put into the vast areas around the old house and barn, chiselling richly planted garden beds from the harsh soil and introducing a diverse range of species, from old-fashioned roses to alpines. I can tell that she was quite a plantswoman and feel a tremendous sense of sadness that she is no longer around to revel in the abundance of her handywork. Many of the plants she has used are the same as those in my Leura garden, so luckily I am familiar with their habits and foibles. As autumn comes in, many of the shrubs and perennials desperately need cutting back, and I offer to spend a few days in the garden to knock it into shape.
My time in Danny’s garden coincides with his repairs to the barn roof that was blown down in a violent January storm. This damage to the property all happened about the same time as Sue’s death, and restoring the barn to its former glory has been a long, heartbreaking haul for him. He is now at the stage of replacing the last rows of roof tiles, which involves tying a long safety rope to himself and clambering over the roof framework which is at least twenty metres from ground level. It’s alarming, and I am just pleased that I can be around working in the garden to keep an eye on him—otherwise, if he had a fall he would have to wait until a neighbour came looking for him. Not a very satisfactory thought.
In glorious weather, I spend three or four days clipping, pruning and deadheading Sue’s precious plants. All the while I am working away I carry on an imaginary conversation with her, in my mind describing for her benefit just how well it’s all coming together. The garden sweeps around three sides of the property, framing a large in-ground swimming pool and set against a backdrop of sunny open fields. There are large areas of lawn edged with curved beds that have been crammed with clumps of iris, fragrant lavender and shrubby roses. Against the creamy stone walls Sue has planted climbing roses and allowed them to wander rampantly; many need pruning back and tidying up if they are to continue flowering prolifically. There are small garden beds around the swimming pool, planted with pelargoniums, variegated oregano and various perennials tough enough to survive the heat in this area, which is magnified by the paving around the pool. There’s a deep pond alive with chirping frogs, and nearby huge clumps of artichokes that are in full flower during the summer. Their dramatic purple-blue blooms work brilliantly with the traditional blue of the painted timber house shutters, and I wonder if Sue planned this association deliberately. If she didn’t, it is definitely a very happy accident.
I am delighted to find that Sue had a huge composting system, and I add all my prunings to the latest heap. I also take some cuttings of various shrubs and perennials, which I get going in a small bed that she had set aside for propagation.
While working away I wonder how my own garden at home is surviving without me for such a long time. During winter it won’t prove a problem, but when spring and summer arrive I know too well that the same sorts of problems that I am tackling here will also be happening at home. Even though I have mulched deeply through most of the beds, I know that various perennial weeds will not be daunted by this tactic. Buttercups, in particular, have a tendency to go mad despite all attempts to control them and I fully expect to arrive back at Christmas and find a jungle in all directions.
But for now I can concentrate on helping Sue’s garden through another season, and hoping that in time it will settle into a pattern that doesn’t require too much maintenance. Just as every garden reflects the gardener’s individual style and personality, Sue’s design shows her love of informality. The generous sweeping flower beds have curved edges and are overflowing with her most treasured plants. However it’s not a garden that will simply look after itself—it was obviously her intention to go on working in the garden for many years to come. True gardeners never ‘finish’ their work. It’s an ongoing process of change and renewal as plants mature and as the gardener’s tastes, knowledge and interests change. So Sue’s garden is in a holding pattern, with just a little tender care from me until another gardener comes along to claim it.
20
IF ANYONE WAS TO SUGGEST six months ago that I would be tucking into a warm salad of duck’s gizzards and loving every mouthful I’d have laughed. Or gagged. Offal of any description has never been my favourite fare. In this part of France fatty ducks and geese are one of the main specialities, and the thrifty resourceful farmers waste no part of the animal—fat, flesh, gizzards and even skin are all put to good use. Foie gras, the rich liver of force-fed geese, is produced here by the thousands of kilos; and other specialities include cassoulet and gésiers, or sautéed duck’s innards. They are wonderfully succulent served warm on a bed of lettuce with walnuts and a light dressing of walnut oil and vinegar.
There’s a well-publicised rumour around these parts that goose and duck fat is actually GOOD fat. Some pundits even claim that it has cholesterol-lowering properties and the proof offered is that people of this region have the lowest cholesterol levels in France, certainly much lower than in those provinces where cream and butter are the specialities. Whether it’s the combination of the fatty ducks and geese washed down with gallons of red wine that has health-giving benefits, or whether the whole promotional campaign is designed to encourage guilt-free consumption, I still have no doubt that eating lots of our web-footed friends is fattening. I am living
proof of this.
The local supermarket shelves are groaning with tins of confit du canard and succulent cuts of duck meat unheard of outside France, including maigret, a breast fillet that is seared on a hotplate then cooked lightly so that it is pink or red inside, like the rarest fillet of steak. It is often barbecued with equally mouth-watering results. It is also possible to buy filleted breasts of dinde (turkey) which also respond well to light cooking and are more flavoursome than plain chicken breasts.
Confit du canard is portions of duck meat—usually leg and thigh—preserved in duck fat, and it is sold either tinned or fresh from a good quality charcuterie, the open marketplace and even the supermarket. The fat is scraped away gently so as not to damage the crinkly skin, then the confit is heated in a frying pan, with the main side turned pan downwards at the end to make the skin crispy. It can also be grilled just before serving to produce the same crunchy effect. This last-minute grilling is also given to the other local speciality, cassoulet. Nothing could be more French than a cassoulet made with love—white haricot beans, confit of duck or goose, mutton, salt pork, garlic sausage, tomatoes, and breadcrumbs to thicken the sauce and become crisp and toasty when the dish is grilled before serving. Heaven.
Another warm and fuzzy rumour going around suggests that ducks and geese actually enjoy being force-fed. That they line up for their turn at having a pipe inserted into their gullet so that several cups of corn can be pumped in via a noisy machine. Well of course they line up, otherwise they’d starve to death or be chased around and force-fed regardless. But the way in which they fall to the ground and are unable to move for a while after being crammed full with grain suggests they are not having the time of their lives. After a few weeks of this, when their livers are practically exploding, they are given the final curtain. It’s not a duck or goose paradise here, that’s for sure.
