As another landscape architect and gardener brace yourself when you go to visit the local garden centres and plant nurseries…it won’t be what you are used to. And bring your own spades!
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Pyrale du Buis needs constant treatment.
A great choice of garden centres around here ranging from the large well presented Dutch style stores with a huge range of plants and garden and household accessories to the well established family businesses that, although being far less flashy, offer a great choice of plants at more reasonable prices.
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Well, the Owner (French) is the Expert and will be up to speed with the needs of whatever he has planted… he is the main worker on the site, but he finally allowed himself 2 helpers, or he would be dead before it was finished… 
When I visited, (with a car club) …the project was very much in the early stages…we walked the grounds, where each section being cleared was marked out with sticks/pegs…and labelled…giving a visual indication of what was to come… eventually.
His enthusiasm was astounding, as he explained his dream…and we all had a wonderful day there…
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@Aquitaine. You are lucky.
Perhaps a positive aspect of having lots of immigrants who garden in the area? We find that the range of varieties of plants, and especially trees, is very restricted unless we travel a long way to specialist nurseries, things like peat free compost are non-existant (apart from a new line at superU which is not v good), and the garden sundries like different size mesh for netting with twisted cord that doesn’t hurt bird’s feet we have to get online. Recently we’ve been looking for some bare root whips for hedging, and can only find two different plants not 30. Swings and roundabouts tho’, if the garden isn’t quite as good as we wamted t least we can sit in it and eat great cheese.
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In what way Jane?
Errr… Why would immigrants have an influence on the nurseries in the area that I live? The large shops are French run for their French clientele and the family firms I use have their own roots deep in the local soil. A bizarre response.
The key to a good garden is to study what you see growing well in the local area so I’ll be touring around for a bit to see what will grow well in our area and build a design around that. Working with nature is much easier than trying to work against it I’ve always found.
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That’s why I’ve used the smaller local nurseries, their plants are suited to the local soils and climate in a way that the national outlets cannot guarantee. Box is used a lot locally but I doubt that any of my neighbours has actually ever paid for a plant.
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The comment about box being expensive was because of the cost of the treatment, especially if bought in the quantities normally sold in local shops. It’s well wort while seeking out a supplier who sells in bulk.
Ha ha… I see what you mean… he will have all that sort of thing well organized… probably/possibly brews his own… he is very “green”… in the best possible way…
I love box but I’m not prepared to risk the expense of buying it with the current explosion in box blight. It can wipe out a hedge in 18 months. If I go down the hedge route it will be hornbeam or yew for me.
The treatment is very green.
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It may well by now… but it used not to be… (as I understand it)… whatever, last time I passed by… the gardens were looking great (box and all)…so he is doing something right… 
That makes a lot of sense given the devastation all around. Just, please, don’t use Leylandaii. 
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In travelling round France we have found the garden centres to be better in areas where there is a sizeable population of english and dutch, ie immigrants. I made no comment about who ran these garden centres, merely presuming that being commercially minded they took notice of the opportunity provided by their clientele. It could equally be that the population have more disposable income. As I said you are lucky.
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I still think it’s a strange notion. There are far, far, far more French residents here in my part of France and any business needs to market products to meet their demand.
Oh don’t worry there I hate leylandii my nemesis is life I spent far to much of my landscaping life cutting those down and removing the stumps to ever want to see one in any garden of mine!
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