Le Courson & Giverny

Thanks Janis for the prompt I was still trying to catch up with my emails! 
What a great weekend, we travelled to Rouen by coach on Friday, and made an 
early start Saturday to Le Courson, which was billed as 'Le French Chelsea' 
which its not! it is totally different, there are over a hundred nurseries 
from all over europe selling plants, and we had 5 hours there. This was spent 
doing a quick tour round so that we could make best use of our euro's and 
then went SHOPPING. Some of the plants  purchased was Campanula punctata? 
'chettles charm'  a white flower with a hint of blue round the edge and a 
similar white semi-double, cimicfuga ' James Compton' a purple Angelica, 
Cornus Kousa 'China doll' , a blue wisteria, a couple of hosta's, Rodgersia 
pinnata, and a few other bits, when we got back to the coach the fellow 
occupants who were obviously not as enthusiastic as us thought the aliens had 
landed as we manouvered 10 carrier bags down the aisle, fortunately we had 
commandeered the back seat to ourselves so had our own plant creche.
Monet's garden in Giverny has to be seen, Janis you were so right about the 
timing, the Wisteria on the chinese bridge was in full flower, the 
waterlillies were out although not open ( overcast), beautiful peaceful 
setting, even with a couple of hundred people! The other part of the garden, 
near the house (across the road) was breathtaking, not a word i use lightly, 
the garden is primarily set out in 1.5m wide borders with paths in between 
leading away from the house, the first 8 or so of these were filled with 
bearded iris's (I germanica) of an incredible range of different colours with 
the borders being about 15m long there must have been hundreds of these all 
in the peak of their flowering, there were billowing borders of white and 
lilac Hesperis which cleverly hid the wallflowers  that had gone over that 
had hidden the tulips that had finished, planting that had provided a 'show' 
for some months. To come were the peaonies, the roses, clematis and so on, 
sorry to have rambled on but as you can tell it certainly made an impact, and 
some memories will stay in my 'mind's eye' for ever. 
One bit of advice if you are lucky to get there, is to go early, at 9.30 on 
our arrival there were 6 coaches in the car park, at 11.30 when we left i 
counted 28 plus a hundred or so cars!
Good advice about the camera as well, i had no option but to comply as i left 
most of my film in the coach!
Have a great weekend, there's a Hardy Plant sale at Doddington Place nr 
Lenham Kent for those in the area!
Colin Moat
Kent England

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