Once the Southern Italy came to a happy conclusion in Catania, Sicily, we flew to Aix-en-Province to get ready for our next tour, one from Provence to the Cote d’Azure.
With a few advance days in Aix to prepare for the tour, we managed to see a few sights, such as Cezanne’s studio, and pausing for a cafe latte on the city’s famous Cours Mirabeau.
Once the group arrived, we started the tour with a relaxing visit to Chateau d’Arnajon, just outside Aix in the village of Le Puy-Sainte-Reparade.
In the bright morning sunlight, the privately-owned chateau looked majestic as we wandered up an avenue of plane trees and into a courtyard where we found masses of fragrant roses growing against lovely 18th century walls.
This garden also had a nymphaeum, a beautiful shell-decorated grotto, dating back to Roman times.
From Le Puy-Sainte-Reparade, we returned to Aix for lunch after which we visited some “bastides” – fortified houses and farms, dating back to the crusades when it was necessary to protect property from marauding crusaders returning empty handed from the Holy Land.
First, we visited Le Château de la Mignarde, famous for being the residence in the 1800s of Pauline Borghese.
Inside the chateau, we got to see a variety of treasures, but we also enjoyed the English-style landscaping of the grounds with ponds, statues and an impressive allee of trees.
Next, it was only a short ride to La Bastide Romegas, which dated back to the mid-17th century.
In another part of Aix, we climbed to a place where Cezanne often painted the view of Mont St Victoire. He painted this view at least 80 times we were told.
In our free time, we got to visit Bastide du Jas Bouffan where Cezanne grew up and started his career as an artist, not always with the support of his father, a wealthy banker.
We spent part of our time in Aix also going to a garden show, which turned out to be a treat, being able to see many of the garden styles and plants people in the area were using.
From Aix-en-Province, we popped into the the winery at Chateau Val Joanis in the Luberon hills, where we found the most beautiful garden full of blue irises, arches of roses, superbly clipped pyramidal yews and espaliered pyracantha. I later found out it has been named one of France’s great “fairy tale gardens”. It’s was quite a discovery.
We moved on to Avignon and explored the town, visiting Saint-Andre Fort and Abbey, the Pope’s Palace, where we climbed to the top of the hill and enjoyed the panoramic views over the Rhone.
We visited Avignon’s famous bridge (or half-bridge).
From Avignon, we visited Saint-Remy-de-Province where we enjoyed time wandering around the town and also visiting the sanatorium where Vincent Van Gogh lived and painted many of his famous works in 1889.
We also made a special side trip to visit Quarries of Light (Carrieres de Lumieres) in Les Baux-de-Provence, a lime quarry turned into an art experience with images of famous paintings being projected on the vast limestone blocks and walls.
From Avignon, we also went to Chauteauneuf-du—Pape for a wine tasting before moving on to St. Tropez, stopping on the way at Domaine du Rayol, a massive garden on the coast with wonderful views of the Mediterranean.
Divided into nine regions, this garden showcased plants from the Canary Islands, Australia, California, New Zealand, South Africa, Subtropical America, High-Altitude Chile, Subtropical Asia, Arid America and the Mediterranean. It also contained a special Marine Garden, which required visitors to put on a mask and snorkel to explore it as most of the garden is below the surface of the water.
Especially impressive were the bright red bottlebrush bushes (Callistemon), drifts of Acanthus mollis and sprawling clumps of cistus. The South Africa section contained good examples of fynbos and cycads as well as scented geraniums, heaths, aloes, acacia and a red flowering coral tree.
Domaine du Rayol is also famous for being the place where France’s former president Jacques Chirac spent part of his childhood.
Next, we popped into St. Tropez, made famous, of course, by Brigitte Bardot in the 1950s. We found it still had a bustling harbour scene with artists scattered everywhere.
From St. Tropez, we moved to Cannes, where we spent the next few days soaking up the atmosphere and visiting nearby Antibes.
From Cannes, we continued on to Nice, from where we took day trips out to Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a Disneyland-like series of gardens built on a hillside by the Baroness Beatrice de Rothschild.
We went up into the hills outside of Nice to the village of Gourdon to see a spectacular green-on-green castle garden that Andre Le Notre, the man responsible for the Palace of Versailles and Vaux le Vicomte, had designed.
In Menton, a little ways down the coast, we visited two spectacular gardens – the Exotic Botanical Garden of Val Rahmeh and Lawrence Johnston’s Serre de la Madone.
At Val Rahmeh, I fell in love with the billowing Mexican red shrimp shrub (Justicia brandegeeana) set against the bright yellow walls of the house with orange flowers of the marmalade bush and blue flowers of thunbergia next to paths.
In Menton, Lawrence Johnston did what he was not able to do at Hidcote, his famous garden in Gloucestershire — grow all the tender exotic plants he loved.
Since we were in the area, we also tiptoed over the border into Italy to visited Thomas Hanbury’s wonderful La Mortola, an oceanside garden in Ventimiglia, Liguria.
This exquisite tropical paradise covered an entire hillside and was full of terrific exotic plants such as aloe, agave and yucca and also had a large woodland of acanthus and dazzling displays of scented flowers.
From Nice, we also visited Monaco and toured the town and the casino area and went to Le Jardin Exotique d’Eze high on the hill overlooking the city with its spectacular harbour and beautiful waterfront properties.
The Southern France tour was a success because not only did we see marvellous gardens and sensational chateaus, we also got to drink great wine, eat amazing food, connect with key locations that have inspired some of the world’s greatest artists and we also got a little taste of the extravagant lifestyle that the rich and famous have enjoyed for centuries. It was wonderful and we all returned with great memories and fun stories to tell.
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