Food & Place
The forty species of mint is just one branch of the vast labiataefamily with its 2000 members. Fortunately just a handful of mints aremore than adequate for most culinary purposes. The most valuable is spearmint, Mentha spicata, with smooth, pointedleaves. Some cooks reckon the best mint sauce is made with a mixture ofspearmint and the…
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I spend a fortune when the catalogue from Burncoose Nursery arrives. An hour passes as I’m lost in the bewitching pages of growing requirements, different varieties and photographs of hundreds of plants, shrubs and trees. Then reality breaks in. For I don’t have the funds or the space for such luxurious choices in my small…
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Whenever I spend February in Saint Montan I’m reminded of so many chilly, winter days in Devon where I gardened for 20 years. Saint Montan is often described as sitting at ‘les portes de Provence’ and the summers do indeed feel Mediterranean; but the season of short days often feels far from the warm weather…
Read MoreI gave up making new year resolutions decades ago. By February memories of what I’d promised to do – or not to do – had faded due to the urgent pressures of the moment and life in general. But this year will be different: I resolve to wage war on unwelcome visitors to the garden.…
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Celebrating the winter solstice is an ancient tradition that is pre-Christian and associated with Pagan rites. The shortest day of the year on 21st December was marked by Celtic priests, known as Druids, who gathered mistletoe to then bestow a blessing – the berries symbolising the seeds of life in the year ahead. The present-day…
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I gave up growing box, Buxus, following the devastation caused by the Asian box tree caterpillar, Diaphania perspectalis, when it arrived in Saint Montan. The sight of both cultivated box, clipped into attractive shapes, and wild box bushes that were growing freely on the hillside, reduced to dry, shrivelled skeletons was sad and ugly. So…
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The Capital of Garlic say the road signs as you approach the town of Piolenc in Provençale Vaucluse, where 2000 tons of Allium sativum are grown each year. On the feast of St John, close to mid-summer day, the town celebrates the ‘Stinking Rose’ with music, a parade, and countless stalls selling garlic in many…
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Every spring, in two large flower pots in my Saint Montan garden, I grow the attractive climbing plant dipladenia, bearing red, pink, or white, trumpet-shaped flowers. Dipladenia grows quickly in the south of France and each plant soon twists its stems around the 2 metre-high tripod in its pot to make an attractive display. By…
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When I began to restore the overgrown Jardin du Curé, some years ago, the fast-flowing ruisseau du Val Chaud provided music while I worked. The cold spring water tumbled noisily over stones and boulders until it reached the larger river in the middle of the village. When it rained, natural springs provided the irrigation for…
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In my first book on herbs, RECIPES FROM A FRENCH HERB GARDEN, I list the twenty herbs from basil to verbena that often play a role – sometimes as stars that top the bill plus others as minor or supporting actors – in the kitchens of France. All culinary herbs have an individual character: in…
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GERALDENE HOLT 