Visiter Les Voisins

When we said we were planning to ‘visit the neighbours’ this year Naomi Slade headed not just over a county border… but right across the Channel!

THERE IS nothing quite like taking a nose around other people’s plots and seeing how the other half gardens, so earlier this year I took a trip across the channel to check out some gardens from our neighbours in Normandy.

It was a bit like a blind tasting at speed. Some gardens came recommended by colleagues, some – like Monet’s garden at Giverny – I have wanted to visit for a very long time, and others I had never heard of. But my mission was to get around as many great gardens as possible in the time available, and get back to Blighty with tales to tell.

First up was Jardin Agapanthe near Grigneuseville, created by non-conformist landscape designer, Alexandre Thomas. This is a truly exciting garden which is big on structure and narrative and is full of surprises – the first of which was pet rabbits and chickens running free, and the second, a huge church window repurposed as a pergola. At night, the space is lit with thousands of lights and the planting is energetic, vivacious and quirky. The garden has no grass, instead the plants are surrounded by gravel and interwoven with cobble paths linked to a sluice and that gradually become streams as the day wears on. I will be going back.