Post Comment Love 25 - 27 September

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they may be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

It’s been good to see the sun and feel its warmth briefly again this week, and it’s spurred us on to restart our garage tidy up and sort out project. Though the other main driver for that is to get it more sorted ahead of the winter, and ahead of storing our garden furniture in there - I think we’ll get it sorted before then, fingers crossed - though we do plan to use our pizza oven possibly one last time, to really enjoy the last of the weather - fingers crossed.

I rediscovered my photo this week as I was editing some from our trip to Angers earlier in the summer. It’s from a display in the central square in Angers, which is known as the green city, and it really is, but what I loved about this giant watering can, was the beaded droplets of water tumbling down the iron plant supports.

It’s just fabulous, have a great week.

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The approach to Chateau d'Angers

For today’s post we’re heading back to Angers, briefly. We visited the city for the first time this summer, and as with any city exploration we went on foot without too much of a route planned. We’d started the day in the Jardin des Plantes on the other side of town and meandered our way towards the river, and the castle which frankly is too big a landmark to miss!

I like the meandering as your wish takes you approach to seeing a city, as much like exploring a garden, sometimes there’s things that just pull you that way and sometimes you don’t know why, but often you end up seeing things you never knew existed, and wouldn’t perhaps have known about if you’d stayed on the more usual routes.

But anyway, we found ourselves down by the river and ahead of us we were intrigued by what we could see, it looked like a tunnel of plants which looked intriguing.

When we got closer that’s exactly what it was - we were too late to see the wisteria in flower (sadly).

But the scent of jasmine and roses filled the space, which also did a great job of screening the traffic from the busy road running alongside the river - beauty and function working well together!

The only thing is that we knew we’d need to climb the hill, as for good reasons castles generally aren’t built at low level are they?

It was understandably quite a way up, and a great lookout spot. But if we hadn’t meandered this way we’d have missed walking through the scent filled ‘tunnel’ and missed seeing this magnolia with it’s rickety fence.

I wasn’t expecting to see such formal gardens in the former moat of the castle, it was just what we needed to spur us on - as not only did we have to walk up, we also needed to walk around the boundary of the castle. The more usual route would have been far less steps, but I’m glad we didn’t opt for that.

We didn’t find a way to get down into this part of the castle gardens, and it may not have been possible - but having seen them as we approached the castle we didn’t mind so much.

And before I finish, let’s take a moment to admire the slate edged wall - that’s equally as impressive. We made our way to the castle entrance and enjoyed more gardens inside the castle’s walls, I’ll share some of those photos in the next post I share from our French trip, but until then I’m off to figuratively get my breath back.

From Sewing to Sowing

* I was invited to this year’s Gardeners’ World Live preview and provided with a pair of tickets for the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

This is the perfect name for a garden isn’t it? I think the designer Annabel Davies should win a prize solely for that, and I’m sure she’s very happy with the Gold award that the judges gave her, but even so - or should that be sew?

But anyway, the garden reflects Annabel’s journey from sewing film costumes to gardening after she discovered a love of growing flowers and vegetables in 2020, which sounds like the perfect lockdown distraction too. And I think I’d love to see her costume designs if this is what her garden’s look like, don’t you agree?

But I digress, the garden is inspired by Arts & Crafts gardens and combines ornamental and productive planting - so no doubt another reason why it scored so highly for me. The show notes said that the garden uses a ‘varied textures of flowers and vegetables much like fabrics bring life to a costume design’.

And looking at this garden again a month or two after the show, that totally makes sense - the dense planting (another favourite of mine) meshing together to form the fabric of the garden.

All the while the plants are struggling to be contained by the raised beds and so spill over the edges with abundance.

It really is a garden, with planting that’s full of joy. Sigh.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for once again inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was another great show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.