The last in the four part Gardens Trust online series on Garden Designs around the French Riviera will take place November 15 very early in the morning, although the lecture is recorded. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.
On November 15 the topic will be Contemporary Botanical Delight and Artistic Sensitivity. The roots run deep in the two final gardens, La Mouissone and Fort France, about 20 miles apart in hills above Cannes, but they are resolutely twenty-first century gardens in their exceptional seasonal planting. Both flourish and grow in private hands: La Mouissone (below) thanks to plantsman Maggie Lockett who has worked to expand the plant repertoire whilst absorbing the influences of Villa Noailles, La Serre de la Madone and, just over the Italian border, La Mortola; the second, Fort France originally Fort Escu, is famously associated with the writings of Lady Fortescue’s Provencal and gardening adventures, the current owners are artist Valerie de Courcel and her husband Pierre. Both gardens have experimented in creating year-round interest with a profusion of planting, the glorious Mediterranean light playing through the trees, shrubs, flowers and bulbs.
Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organisations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. Since the 1990s she has been researching, writing about and lecturing on the Riviera. Caroline is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).
