Here are some more glimpses of VBG Friend, Joanna Millar’s lovely garden in Tourrettes-sur-Loup in Provence (see Ventnorensis Vol. 27 Spring/Summer 2020).
It is a personal landscape that has evolved, with more than 50 years of Joanna’s love and care, from a wilderness containing a number of ancient olives and ‘many interesting trees and shrubs’. It is now a year-round joy winding up the old limestone-walled terraces where the steps and walls themselves have become important features.
Raising the canopies of the old trees and developing beds around them gives a free-flowing feel to the planting.
Plants are allowed to seed around the garden. Joanna calls her gardening style ‘haphazard’, but the result is a riot of colour and texture.
One of the first thing the Millars planted after they bought the Prieuré in 1969 was the wisteria on the terrace
Now wisterias are magnificent in Spring around the garden.
Roses are a great feature of the garden and Joanna reports that they have been particularly delightful this spring.
The sundial, with its typical memento mori looks down from the warm stone wall of the house, but it would be hard to feel anything but joyful in this beautiful garden.
Finally, a “Millar miscellany” which includes Rosa ‘Joanna Millar in all its glory clothing an old Cypress and Joanna’s faithful companion surveying the scene.
A garden is never finished of course and it is good to know that, although she is no longer able to travel here, Joanna still finds inspiration from Ventnor Botanic Garden. After spotting a lovely low purple bush in one of the recent sets of Garden pictures that Rosemary sent links to, Persicaria ‘Red Baron’ has now been ordered from a French nursery!
