Le Dieu de Vivaces

It was not I who honoured Bernard Lacrouts with this title, but another client, and he is certainly far too modest to accept it. Still as long as we can think pagan, since there are other 'Gods' to be found, I am in agreement. We are very lucky to have someone as good as he who is  reasonably easily available. His nursery is situated just outside of Vic en Bigorre - roughly speaking  just above Tarbes - very close to the road from Vic to Pau. One of his many advantages is that he has very good website - www.unjardindevivaces.fr - where you will find a better idea of how to get to him than I have provided.  There is also on the site a most excellent catalogue, which you can download and print out, most of the plants having photos available.  His descriptions and advice may not be quite up to the standard of Thierry Denis - another 'Dieu de Vivaces' but two or three hundred miles away, and with a much more limited selection - but they are good enough.

What is so good about him ? Well, first of all there is the accueil. He and his rather remarkable lady 'colleague' - a champion archer, surfer and snowboarder - could not be more welcoming, without being too much in your face:  you are allowed to get on with your visit, but if you need advice they are there to help.  There probably is a plan, though I have yet to work it out, but the large area is sufficiently well organized to make finding things fairly easy, and when I was there earlier this week all the plants were looking well despite the intense heat of recent days. In these hard times price is an important consideration and his seem to me to be very reasonable.  But what makes his nursery a bit different from many others in our region is the choice.

Compared with England I would say that the average nursery and garden centre in France is rather conservative in their choice, though perhaps that is changing a little. But Lacrouts has always travelled widely in search of new plants, so he knows what is happening in England or elsewhere in Europe.  For example his current catalogue lists over fifty hardy geraniums, including all the important new varieties such as  G. Orian and G.Rozanne.  All the different varieties of vivace are well-represented - achilleas, asters, phloxes, thalictrums, etc., etc. as well as what in the old days one would have called rockery plants, including the increasingly fashionable Delospermas, for me a sort of mesembryanthemum, with names such as Nelson Mandela, and Graaff-Reinet, the latter in fact a rather disappointing white, but since I was at Graaff-Reinet last January I felt that I had to have it. If you like day lilies you will not be disappointed, or for instance salvias of which there is a huge choice.

But what gives me particular pleasure is finding plants that I have never heard of, yet alone come across, this after a life timing of gardening a not very frequent event. On my last visit I suddenly came across a very fine specimen of what turned out to be Patrinia scabiosifolia. It is difficult to describe. Christopher Lloyd who came to admire it in late life likened it to the tall Valerian which you can see growing on roadside verges at this moment if not cut down by the over eager 'équipement', but with flowers 'of a cool yellow with just a hint of green in them'. There is a worry about just how much heat and dryness it can take. Lacrouts thought that it probably would need rather more moisture than I can provide here, especially at this moment with temperatures well over 30.C, but Lloyd thought that it went well with Verbena bonariensis which suggests that it could manage some 'secheresse'.  If anybody knows anything about the weather in Eastern Siberia they would be able to provide the answer because apparently that is where it hails from. But in all events it has that unmistakable look of a quality plant, and is just one example of the kind of vivace you will find chez Lacrouts.