New friends in France

Whoever makes a garden
Has oh so many friends:
The glory of the morning,
The dew when daylight ends
Anon

When you have a baby, suddenly everyone wants to be your friend. It's a bit the same between gardeners, and we have new friends in France. Cinda (an existing gardening friend!) said: 'Why not come along to Les Parterres en Kit at Fontenille, where they're holding a plant sale on Easter Monday?'. Great idea. We all went along, and met Lucia and Jos, a Dutch couple who have been living in France for about 8 years.

Lucia has hit on a plan. She is a fan of the English gardener and writer Michael King, who now lives in Holland. He advocates a new and more natural way of creating herbaceous borders and flower meadows, and Lucia has followed some of his planting plans, which she supplies in the form of plants (kits) to her French customers. She has tailor-made her choice of the plants she supplies to suit the calciferous clay soils and the extremes of temperature and rainfall of Burgundy. She has done the experiments so, hopefully, I don't have to. We came back from the plant sale with epimedium, Tricyrtis formosana, and aster to put into the existing beds.

Looking out at the garden from the house, snowdrops and winter aconites that were so pleasing a month ago have now gone. Daffodils, mostly not in their final places, are blooming well, but the glory of the garden at this time are the primroses and the hundreds of violets. Violets are everywhere on the verges and in gardens – it's a very good violet year – and they punch well above their tiny weight in terms of charming impact.

As we leave France, tulips are ready to bloom, hydrangeas, philadelphus, rose and hazel leaves are bursting and the hypericum, Virginia creeper and cystus brought from England are finding their feet. I put rosemary and lavender temporarily between sturdy rose bushes in the hope that they will be safe from the tramping of the expected roofers. When we return in a month, the garden may be gently coming into its own, or it may be flattened and crying out for help, depending on whether or not the artisans have decided to turn up.