The Luberon Garden: river of lavender

The Chelsea Flower Show in London this week - under skies like a grey woolly blanket - reminds me of a happy coincidence involving an iconic garden and some satisfying elements of detective work that I’ve been saving to share here.

It begins with a book, as most of my trails do. The Luberon Garden by veteran landscape designer Alex Dingwall-Main, is a rip-roaring good read about his years creating gardens in Provence, crammed full of useful information about plant-growing in the South of France.

It’s one of those books that’s written by someone who shoots from the hip, who wants to tell a story – lots of stories – without literary constraint, and frankly is all the more enjoyable for that. There’s a real sense of a larger-than-life personality behind the jokes that occasionally misfire, the all-too-honest assessment of tricky situations and the frustrations along the way behind the garden successes. 
 

His own house and garden are described in detail. “The house we finally settled for was an old mas that lay in a hammock of land slung between the medieval villages of Catholic Bonnieux on one side and Protestant Lacoste on the other, slightly favouring the latter with its position. It was a tired old place that had had the top floor renovated thirty years before we saw it in a style much appreciated by the paysanne.”

There were holes in the roof and walls that were not as solid as they appeared. “In fact, the house told boundless lies, deceived us with false promises of strength and sniggered at us behind our back as we became ensnared by its capricious charm.” He and his wife would look down on it from the terrace of the Café de France in Lacoste above, and marvel at how it could look so tranquil.

And so it was, at about this time last year, that I found myself on the same terrace, taking in the panorama – when I suddenly realised I was looking down at something that I knew about: one of Alex Dingwall-Main’s most memorable design features, the river of lavender he made as the centrepiece of his own Luberon garden. I’d long been curious to see it but never thought it would be possible. So I took a couple of photos to compare with the passages in the book.   

“The ‘river’ started at the top of the highest bank, zigzagged its way down the slope, flowed on through the quince orchard, and finally arrived at the ‘wine lake’. That’s what I pretentiously called our remaining forty vines. I had been certain that if we were going to use lavender in the garden then it had to be applied in a slightly different style.”

You can clearly see in this photo the lavender’s flow through the quince trees in blossom and the vines at the bottom. (If all this seems intrusive, I will just say that Dingwall-Main no longer lives in Provence, and moved on from this house many years ago.)

He wrote: “Owing to the soil varying in consistency over the route, it flowers stronger in some places than it does in others, which increases the effect. I wish I had added white lavender to give highlights; it would have been quite subtle and easy to do, but it was missed, so there we are. The whole thing is maintenance heavy and only has a life span of seven or eight years and I doubt I’ll have the energy or inclination to do it again, but meanwhile it is most welcome.”

Well, The Luberon Garden was published in 2001, and the events described largely took place in the 1990s, so either the river lasted far longer than he expected, or – perhaps more likely – subsequent owners have been inspired to keep it flowing.

If this has piqued your interest and you want to see more of his work, you can visit Alex Dingwall-Main’s garden design website here.

Signs of high summer

The sun is beating down, the narrow streets in town are getting more crowded, and the locals are muttering darkly in supermarket queues about the seasonal influx of foreigners, and worse - Parisians. British and American voices can be heard in passing at every market in Provence. On the roads, we remember just in time what masters of the unexpected Belgian drivers can be.

And on walls and in shop windows everywhere, posters have appeared advertising the summer's entertainments. There are village parties open to all, starting with boules tournaments, progressing to two nights of dancing under the stars and ending with vide greniers, the "attic clear-out" sales on the streets and village squares that provide such rich pickings of shabby chic artefacts.

There are serious concerts in superb settings such as the hilltop castles at Gordes and Lacoste, recitals in churches, and village bands in the squares under the trees. Then there are the food evenings, involving vins et fromages (wines and cheeses) and soupe au pistou (a soup with tomatoes, garlic and basil) accompanied by musical entertainments. Truly, there is something for everyone.

PS. For some reason Blogger won't upload any of my recent photos, and trying to do so is sending me mad this morning! But I'm so aware that my blogging has been patchy to say the least of late, so I'm determined to post something, even if it is with last year's pictures. I may revisit later and attempt a reconciliation with Blogger...

It's working! I'm going in to try for another!

Hurray! And when there's no more space for posters on walls and in windows, they're pinned to headless men who walk around town...

The Marquis de Sade's castle

Now that high tourist season was over, the streets were quiet. We discovered anew the enchanted villages of the great valley: Bonnieux, topped with a church not a castle, opposite the bleak ruined fortress of Lacoste; Menerbes, ship-like on its low outcrop at the foot of the range; Roussillon, perched on the edge of surging cliffs of red ochre amid green pines; Gordes, majestic in its autumn emptiness, incomparable views framed to artistic perfection by its own limestone ridges planted with candles of cypress.

                                                             From The Lantern

These villages, built on high rocky outcrops, are some of the most lovely in Provence. From a distance, the most forbidding is Lacoste, with its bleak ruined castle that once belonged to the Marquis de Sade. These days it is owned by the veteran fashion designer Pierre Cardin and is the centerpiece of a summer music festival. World-wide opera stars sing here within its ruined walls on warm summer nights, and tickets are much prized.

But it has a gruesome past. Before the cruel and excessive Marquis arrived, the castle was already a notorious haunt, as the scene of the rape, torture and murder of three hundred members of the heretical sect of the Vaudois in the sixteenth century. The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was a politician, philosopher and sexual libertine. He was forced to flee his castle in Lacoste in 1777 – that year there was trouble with everyone: local women, male servants, the police – and the place was eventually destroyed by an angry mob. The Marquis spent thirty-two years in prison, some of those in a mental asylum, and sealed his notoriety in his own books Justine and One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom, written in his cell.

Nowadays it’s still a steep climb on the narrow cobbled streets up to the castle, but Lacoste is a sleepy place. An art school flourishes here, and galleries of modern work, including the Espace Cardin, stand higgledy-piggeldy with cracked stone houses with lushly overflowing gardens, cafés and restaurants, including the Restaurant Sade. (“Bet they can whip up a good lunch there!” – Rob)

There are lovely views from all around, especially across a valley to the east where the village of Bonnieux flaunts its proud Catholic tradition with a church at its highest point, in answer to the stark ruins of Lacoste’s pinnacle of amorality.