In the garden of "le fleuriste" back in the day..."Où sont les neiges d'antan?"

| Friday, March 12, 2021

Dear Friend,

“On n’a jamais acheté des fleurs aux temps de mon père,” says Madame Francine complacently, looking down with satisfaction at her row of boutures, green and hopeful in the morning sun. Francine’s father could do anything. He was a builder by trade and a nurseryman "à ses heures." He had a greenhouse, where he spent contented hours on Sunday afternoons, raising plants for her mother’s garden and window sill. And he never had to spend un centime on commercially grown plants!
 
Francine keeps her own crop of seedlings and cuttings arranged in tin cans and plastic butter pots. They sit on the raised rim of a flower bed outside her front door in the stable block next to the Chateau. She cares for them as for her several cats and their kittens -- untidily but with abundant amour. 
 
This fine March morning, meanwhile, her husband is toiling in the mechanical innards of the tractor. Why does the old monster belch clouds of black smoke and guzzle oil as a templier consumes alcohol? Glasses perched on his nose, brow furrowed, he holds a wrench poised in the air while he reads the small print in the manual. Monsieur Xavier might just as well have been her own father’s son, he is so handy, remarks Francine. Except, as he admits himself, “il n’a guère la main verte.”

No green thumb.
 
Monsieur Xavier has more of la main noire, a black hand when it comes to vegetable life. And that is a useful trait, too. Perhaps the lemon trees droop sadly during their winter exile in the Orangerie for lack of water and fertilizer. The wisteria overruns the old maison de maître for lack of pruning. And daffodils are mowed down before their leaves have a chance to ripen and feed next year’s flowers.

On the other hand, as it were, no mercy is shown to brambles, volunteer saplings, and unruly weeds. 
 
Within the garden walls, nature is coddled by Francine and neglected by her spouse. Beyond them, it is ruthlessly beaten back.
 
Our next attack on les espaces verts, as “landscaping” is known in France, targets the flourishing blackberries and reeds that engulf the well-house. They are suspected of strangling our spring. This fount feeds the water tanks in the stabulations and pastures. Since last summer, we have had to supplement the cattle’s water with "l’eau de la ville" – town water. Francine’s father, who knew the value of a centime, would not approve. Neither must I.

The well-house protects "le puits", the spring that fills the moat and the water tanks for the cattle.

In days of the Comtesse de Pelet, the previous owner of the Chateau, the well-house stood upright and perky under its grey slate roof. The grass around it was cropped short by young calves. That was another epoque indeed! Then, flowers and vegetable plants were raised in the serre, or greenhouse, attached to the maison de maître that stands next to the Orangerie. The walled garden, the house, and the Orangerie itself were collectively known as “le fleuriste,” the florist. Here lived the chauffeur, his wife, and their young sons, the De Moor family pictured looking down from the windows in the photo below. Monsieur De Moor took care of the Comtesse’s kennel and its occupants as well as the car. His wife helped in the kitchen. And a gardener tended les fleurs.

In front of the Chateau were large oblong beds of red roses, now vanished. Like stiff cushions trimmed with braid, the symmetrical beds were raised into low mounds and bordered with bedding plants,. More red roses bloomed along the moat, as they still do today. (I finally replaced them a few years ago, with Benjamin Britten shrub roses from David Austin; not only hardy, they bloom from May until December.) And there is still an ebullient border of yellow-flowered potentilla behind them.

Gilles, one of the boys in the window of the maison de maître, sent us the snapshot of the glory days of the walled garden of the Orangerie.

The "fleuriste" itself was a color riot, as my mother used to drily say of certain gardens. But what looks gaudy under a hot summer sun, cheers the cockles of one’s heart in the cooler clime of Normandy. Rows of blue and mauve marguerites grew under the care of the gardener’s main verte. There were red and pink carnations, blue bachelor’s buttons, tall delphiniums in hues from the palest pastel blue to deep violet, pink gladiolas, dahlias, and, of course, more roses. This was a cutting garden. Here, la Comtesse, like her predecessors at Chateau de Courtomer, came to confer with the gardener, to order and select flowers.

Decorating with cut flowers was the height of fashion when Madame la Comtesse was a young woman. In those days at the turn of the 20th century, cut flowers appeared in lapels, on hats and upon le corsage (a lady’s bust). Bouquets, wedding garlands and funeral couronnes appeared on tables, altars and tombs. Decorating with flowers was part of “savoir-vivre,” the art of gracious living.

The description of floral preparations for the visit of the Russian tsar and tsarina to Paris in 1896, when the Comtesse was a girl of 11, gives some idea of the exuberant extravagance of those years: flowers blanketed or swung from every structure on the sovereigns’ route, from the Ranelagh train station near the Russian Embassy, to street lamps and theater facades, to the Elysée Palace and Versailles, where thousands of roses and orchids decorated the state rooms.

Garlands of flowers from street lamps and a big bouquet for the tsarina Alexandra and her husband Nicholas, when they visited Paris in 1896. Cut flowers and floral decor were all the rage in the Belle Epoque, and the Chateau's cutting garden was thriving.

Of course, by the time the old countess died in 1980, the aristocratic lifestyle she had known was on the verge of extinction. The elections of 1981 ushered in a brave new world of wealth and property taxes. Le droit de travail, work rules, conceived in the 1930s for factories, were now extended to rural occupations. Gone were the gardeners who had patiently plucked weeds from the parterres in front of the Chateau. No-one would now be raking the gravel by hand or rolling the lawn.

Back in the 15th century, the famous French poet François Villon asked plaintively, “Où sont les neiges d’antan?” Where are the snows of yesteryear? He was evoking his lost youth, for he had turned 30, and those beautiful women now grown old.

And as the snows melt in due time, so at Courtomer le fleuriste returned to nature, the glass house was taken down and sold, the roof of the maison de maître fell in.

And yet…as gardens may decay, so they may also rebound! When the Comtesse herself had arrived at the Chateau in 1905, hay was being grown right up to the cour d’honneur, as the postcard at the top of this letter depicts.

Times and tastes change…as Francine presses carnation seeds into a pot, I’m making sketches for new gardens at Chateau de Courtomer.

A bientôt,

P.S. We expect a new gardener in a few weeks. It is said that he loves plants! Meanwhile, I’m delving into our archives to discover how the chatelaines of yesteryear gardened at the Chateau. I’ll be sharing the fascinating history of French gardens and particularly those at Chateau de Courtomer, from the earliest traces in our archives, in coming installments.

We'd love to show you our gardens...and to welcome you to the Chateau or to our newly renovated Farmhouse, perfect for smaller groups. Please write to Heather or Béatrice (both are bilingual in English and French), or, of course to me, with any questions at info@chateaudecourtomer.com. We look forward to hearing from you!