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Languedoc climate

As Sean asked, here is some information on the climate we have here in
Languedoc, South of France. Hope this can be useful for you.

South of France can be divided in two major zones : the famous Cote d'Azur
on one hand (from Toulon to Italy), which has milder winters, less wind,
and often acid soils, and on the other hand the regions from Toulon to 
Spain, including Provence, Languedoc and Roussillon. 

I live in Languedoc, near Montpellier, right on the sea side.

Soil ? Ugh... heavy alcaline clay. Deep mud in winter, becoming  worse than
concrete in summer. Very bad for plants, which die of too much water during
the heavy rainfalls in autumn. 

Temperatures ? Nice and hot in summer (somewhere between 30 ° C and 38 ° C
during July and August), and cold in winter. Normal winters we have - 5 to
- 8° C during a few days. One winter out of ten we would have - 10 to -12 °
C during short periods. People think that the influence of the sea is good
: that's wrong ! Let me explain why. Because of the sea we usually don't
get too cold temperatures, and plants do not harden as they would have in
colder zones. And suddenly when we do get the very cold temperatures,
plants get really damaged.

Rainfall ? Lots of rain (600 mm), but only during a few autumn months.
Spring usually is very windy and can be quite dry, and we have just about
no rain from 15 th May to 15 th August.

Wind ? Terrible. I love it, but you really have to choose the right plants,
with small, thick, leathery leafs. Most of the time it blows from the North
(Mistral, or Tramontane). But even worse, sometimes it comes from the sea
(South-East) , and with it we have the salt. Storms on the Mediterranean
are very bad. In December  we had south winds stronger than 160 km per
hour. I thought all the greenhouses would fly away. Only some of them did
:-)

What's the landscape like ? Mostly dull, endless vineyards in the plains.
The hillsides though are covered with a typical mediterranean garrigue,
just beautiful in spring. Cistus, Phlomis, Helichrysum, Iris, Euphorbia,
Teucrium, lots of orchids, Lavandula, Rosmarinus, Pistacia, Phillyrea,
Rhamnus, Quercus ilex and Quercus coccinea... theses are our native plants,
which we love.

What plants do we grow ? Well if you want to fight endlessly against
nature, you can succumb to the eternal subtropical temptation of the
mediterranean gardener. But if you are either lazy, or intelligent, or
both, you can try cold and drought and wind and salt resistant plants... 

Olivier
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