The Garden Story at Arts in the Garden, Luxury B & B, Normandy, France

 

More than 18 years in the making, the gardens offers the visitor an abundance of surprises, combining traditional features of English garden design with others, more personal and eccentric; winding paths opening unexpectedly into long vistas framing a statue or a birdbath; paved areas using natural local stone set in mosaic patterns; box bushes shaped into globes, cubes and cones; nooks and crannies and secret places...

In addition to a wide range of trees and flowering shrubs (tulip tree, walnut, cedars, magnolia, pine, monkey puzzles, laburnums, rhododendrons, azaleas, etc., more than a hundred Japanese maples dominate the Spring and Autumn with their blazing pinks, reds and yellows; those planted in open ground are now growing to maturity; others, confined to pots, are acquiring the intricacy and refinement of bonsai.

Arts in the Garden

 

With its combination of eccentricty and formality and its often unconventional use of colour, it's not hard to see that this is an artists' garden...

...an impression strengthened by the sculptures, mosaics, reliefs and other art objects to be discovered in the many nooks, crannies and secret places of the garden.