A bed of roses

The comte's only visible legacy was a parterre of roses...which our gardener seemed determined to eradicate...how the gardens at Chateau de Courtomer took shape...the first part of a series...

Chère amie, cher ami,

For several years, I had worried about the health of my roses. Normandy’s climate and rich soil is excellent for these plants. Mine did not flourish.
 
The comte had left a double parterre of red roses, his only visible legacy to the Chateau. A man born for another era, when he would have raced horses, hunted the stag, and devoted himself to public service without a qualm for the cost, he had dilapidated his fortune. Oak trees had been felled for wood; the great cedars and sequoias felled by storms were not replanted. Flowerbeds and the grand potager had been grassed over. The greenhouse was taken apart and sold. The lawns were left to grow tall for hay.
 
The Comte’s roses grew on either side of the stone bridge that crosses the inner douve, or moat. On one side, the rose bed was hedged with potentilla, which has yellow blossoms.  On the other, with a low band of privet. Although I have never particularly liked masses of strong color in a garden, these plants aroused a sense of respectful loyalty. They were part of the patrimoine of the Chateau that we had taken on as owners. 

 A postcard, probably from the early 1950s, shows the Chateau in its final glory days. By the time we arrived, the only flowers were red roses in the "parterre" or flowerbed to the left, next to the moat. The "grand potager" to the rear was overgrown pasture as was the "parc" directly behind the Chateau.

And perhaps the roses were an ancient variety. The stumps were gnarled and mossy.
 
Meanwhile, our gardener was also our homme à tout faire. He mowed lawns and sprayed désherbant on the gravel and the rose bed. He also cut firewood, replaced fuses, bled the radiators, changed the oil in the car, picked us up at the train station, and locked up after us when we went to Paris. 
 
He was devoted to Monsieur, my husband, le patron. He had explained that Monsieur was to tu-toie him and that this was not to be reciprocal. A patron, Albert stated, may address his employees, like his children and his equals, by the pronoun “tu.” In fact, this is a sign of affection and la confiance. 
 
But respect is due to one’s patron, just as it is to a father. This is expressed by the employee or child using the pronoun “vous.” 
 
My husband, who called everyone “vous” for simplicity’s sake, assented to this arrangement. When Albert was determined, it was almost impossible to withstand him.
 
As a very young child, Albert had been deposited in an orphanage by his parents. His father and mother organized their lives a little better and got married. They had a daughter. But they never came back for Albert.
 
We only learned the story over the course of many years. But it perhaps explained the mixture of ferocity and deep fidelity with which Albert regarded his work and our family’s occupation of the Chateau.
 
I knew little about roses in the beginning, and nothing at all about our homme à tout faire. 
 
“Is it wise to use le round-up around the roses, Albert?” I asked.
 
In response, Albert twitched his gaulois without opening his lips and muttered. He continued spraying the weeds.
 
“I’m not sure it’s very good for roses,” I persisted. It didn’t seem to be very good for the soil either, which had taken on a greenish cast.
 
Albert stopped spraying brusquely. He turned his attention to the gravel of the cour d’honneur and the paths. He never sprayed the roses in front of me again.
 
Nevertheless, the roses did not flourish. I began to understand that Albert was not actually fond of plants. 
 
He accepted the cycle of the seasons and changing seasonal tasks. But he did not care for the apparent disorder and unpredictability of individual growing things. With the mower, he could regiment the grass into equal lengths of blade. With weed-killer, remove unconforming plant life. With a chainsaw, he cut back errant tree limbs and felled subjects that leaned off-center.
 
He liked bedding plants, which are planted in the spring to last a season. Despite my pleas, Albert never left the bedding plants to die a natural death as autumn days dwindled into winter frosts. He dug them up as soon as school began in September and we had to return to Paris.
 
Albert approved of rules and hierarchy; nature was too natural. Having suffered from the frailty of human nature, he was determined to impose order on nature itself.
 
His pruning was as strict as his insistence on what he considered to be proper pronouns. Rose bushes, I once read, are machines to produce roses. Without much reading, Albert must have arrived at the same conclusion. But, of course, a plant is not actually a machine. Progressively, the roses were dwindling away into bare stumps.
 
“Let them grow a bit taller,” I suggested. Albert nodded. The roses grew taller. I came back from a week in Paris to find the roses had been firmly lashed to thick stakes with orange baling twine.
 
“Driving a stake through their hearts,” commented an English friend. “Not quite the thing, I shouldn’t have thought.”
 
I mentioned it.
 
“They’re too old,” replied Albert, after a silence. “I will plant new ones.”
 
“He must be right,” agreed his ally, Monsieur. “They don’t look very healthy.”
 
Albert dug up the roses and bundled them into one of the root cellars in the Chateau. Meanwhile, we selected “Benjamin Britten,” a red rose from the English rose-breeder David Austen. The rose was said to be remontant, or a repeat bloomer, and very hardy, even in the partial shade to one side of the moat. It was resistant...at least, to disease.
 
The new roses flowered timidly the first year. A lavish application of chemical fertilizer produced a spectacular display the year after that. But the dispiriting cycle began again. Pruned to the stub, lashed to posts, competing with weeds, struggling against weed-killer, the bushes were like dainty 19th-century ladies gradually succumbing to consumption.
 
Albert and I were at cross purposes, I complained to Monsieur.
 
“Souvent la rude épine produit de douces roses,” he replied airily. 
 
“Often the rough thorn produces sweet roses.”
 
“But “Quand la rose est flétrie, on méprise l'épine,” says the same author," commented our scholarly son Henry, raising his head from a book. 
 
“When the rose withers, one despises the thorn. Ovid.”
 
Monsieur and I sighed. We all knew that no matter how rough and thorny he might be, we would never dismiss Albert. 
 
Then one day last autumn, a new circumstance arose.
 
“C’est l’arrêt maladie,” Albert informed us. Years of hauling logs and other heavy objects had ruined several of his disks. He had carpel tunnel syndrome in his wrists and arthritis in his hands. There was another problem he was too delicate to mention. And he must undergo several petites interventions at the hospital. He was supposed to stay home and rest for at least a month.
 
“Ne vous inquiétez ! I’ll still come to the Chateau every day,” he assured us. 
 
“Although the doctor says I can’t do any weeding!” he added, looking at me.
 
My English friend had casually mentioned that her gardener had a few spare days free every month. Monsieur Martyn arrived the following week. I met him at the parterre beside the douve.
 
A few days later, Albert drove up in his camionette. I heard the tell-tale crunching of his determined tread upon the gravel. I set down my coffee and rushed outside to intercept him. Slipping off the sling he was wearing on his right arm, he was striding across the cour d’honneur toward the parterre of roses.

 One of the last roses hangs its head; autumn morning at the Chateau.

To be continued…despite it all, the gardens at the Chateau take shape, discovering their history, and choosing roses for new plantations this autumn… 

                           A bientôt au Château!

                           Elisabeth


As always, Heather and Beatrice (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be happy to help you reserve your own holiday or special gathering at the Chateau or just to rent the Chateau, the Farmhouse or both. We have just a few openings for this year and 2023, and are taking bookings through 2025. We look forward to hearing from you.