Am off to London tomorrow for two weeks, so will have to be on my return.
@DrMarkH
Any ideas? Architectural layouts.
Approximately from 500 AD to 1500 AD so a few designs to play with.
Thanks, you set me thinking and it struck me (though happy to be corrected probably by @JaneJones or @vero ) that there’s comparatively little difference in lay-out between early Middle Eastern gardens which are domestic versions of an oasis, mediaeval Christian monastery and physic gardens and later formal French ones - all feature rigid geometry, with particular emphasis of the corners and junctions, also highly symmetrical, with low plantings like box or French parterres.
None of the above features usually appeal to Brit gardeners who instead love of ‘naturalness’ via it be via Capability Brown, or Gertrud Jekyll. OTOH Chinese and Japanese gardens long predate this pseudo informality.
I’m about halfway throughmaking a ‘Mediterranean’ garden in a section of our garden that is the collapsed remains of a mediaeval stone house. It won’t be naturalistic but will reference rocky succulent gardens on the Cote d’Azur and aspects of my former large wholly succulent, ‘waterwise’ garden in S Africa’s Eastern Cape.
Trying to condense all the above, ‘natural’ features, studied informality, a little shaggy in places, meandering paths, no obvious sense of structure (despite being well-planned) seem to characterise the English (British?) ‘ideal’ that probably dates from the late C18th.
Pretty vague response, and you probably knew all of that already!
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But since @Wozza is looking for ideas for a French garden, that’s not an issue. Since the French love(d) structure and rigidity.
I immediately thought low box hedges but wonder @Wozza whether you know how bad box blight is around you?
Box blight is a problem here.
Yes must have rigid geometry something like this but I think SF’ers can come up with something better.
Lavender, rosemary (or yew?) instead of box in the parterres…
The arched recess in the far wall could form the basis for an unexpected ‘surprise’ feature.
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More English than French, but might provide food for thought - the project was one by my friend with the ‘Singapore Rolex’.
Wish my compost came out like that
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The most common mistake of composting is not putting enough brown matter (carbon) into the mix. Easily rectified by adding more, leaves, brown cardboard, egg boxes, dry grass etc. Mix it up or layer it to keep it aerobic.
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I’ve got a couple of bins (4 in total) that you can rotate to turn the contents. I do put earthworms in when I find them and regularly turn. The compost is ok, but very wet and clumpy. I’ll try adding more leaves
I probably pay little attention to correct amounts and also I only have 1 bin so it doesn’t get ever finished. I got about 3 barrows from my hen-posting area in the spring but I need to build something to keep it all together!!
Earth worms and compost worms are different, leave the earth worms in the ground.
If wet and clumpy you need more brown matter to aerate turn or mix up once or twice.
I layer my compost bins with cardboard, straw, dry grass, dry plant materials, wood shavings, wood chips etc; whatever I can get my hands on / scavenge (but I’m a bit of a nutter 
) and greens. When I have grass clippings or fresh manure, I mix cardboard, paper etc into the green grass, manure, kitchen & garden waste.
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A composter or three would do the trick. 2 parts brown for 1 part chicken manure, chicken s*** is very high in nitrogen, Gr8 stuff!
To build the same Mk 1 prototype as in the above pics.
1 Man or Woman type.
4 Euro palettes (much easier than others as standard).
A few nails and screws
A saw.
Tape measure and a set square.
A bit of elbow grease.
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One of the problems we have is that we have so much grass there is no way it would fit into a compost bin - even several compost bins! Currently we have a huge old-fashioned heap which, needless to say, does not produce good compost as it’s merely somewhere to dump the grass.
Things are improving a bit now part of the grass is tended by a robot mower, since that (sort of) mulches and we have 3 large enclosures we use for weeds/kitchen/waste/other garden stuff. That produces compost of a sort but the whole composting thing is proving more of a challenge than expected.
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@toryroo have you got your garlic in yet?
I sent the link to this tread to @mikep and read through a few of the old posts & saw you had a great harvest this year. I seem to remember someone asking me when is the best time to plant I think it was @KarenLot ?
No not yet, will do this week! Need to buy red onions, shallots too.
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Along with garlic and onions I also plant peas and broadbeans for bumper early harvests
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I didn’t know I could do this! Where in France are you? Do they need protecting?