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For anyone hankering after European formality—only a touch, we’re not talking Versailles—Le Jardin Plume in Upper Normandy is just the ticket. Influenced by more recent movements involving perennials and grasses, the former orchard is nevertheless firmly rooted in French garden tradition, including plenty of neat clipping and evergreen hedges.

When Patrick and Sylvie Quibel first arrived here in 1996, they found an orchard and much flat space, formerly occupied by sheep. Let’s take a grand tour around their garden:

Photography by Claire Takacs.

Le Jardin Plume in Auzouville-sur-Ry, near Rouen, France.
Above: Le Jardin Plume in Auzouville-sur-Ry, near Rouen, France.

Sky-reflecting geometric pools may be part of the language of Baroque, but a pair of Adirondack chairs dispenses with lofty notions, as does the timber and brick house.

A network of hedges near the house has an early-20th-century English look: Different styles are accommodated because they are all connected. Le Jardin Plume is a synthesis of European gardens, now.

Above: Visible beyond the pool are the silhouettes of apple trees young and old, in the orchard.

Orchard Garden

An old sheep pasture around the trees is reconfigured as a giant parterre, with an orchard in it.
Above: An old sheep pasture around the trees is reconfigured as a giant parterre, with an orchard in it.

The base note in this garden is still a series of fruit trees, but they have been incorporated into a vast parterre, with long grass marking the divisions, with miscanthus in the foreground.

Above: By midsummer, the flowery meadow has been scythed and collected into haystacks, while longer miscanthus grass is allowed to stay.

In spring, traditional orchard bulbs flower under the apple trees, including pheasant’s eye daffodil, Byzantine gladiolus, and snake’s head fritillary. They are succeeded by native wildflowers such as meadow cranesbill and cowslip.

Feather Garden

Above: Inside precision-cut enclosures of boxwood, tall perennials are allowed to express themselves.

Hedges, everywhere, establish an ancient atmosphere while doubling up as a network of useful windbreaks. To the right, vibrant pink Persicaria orientalis, or prince’s feather.

The Plume, or Feather Garden. Herbaceous perennials and grasses are backed up by a wavy hedge.
Above: The Plume, or Feather Garden. Herbaceous perennials and grasses are backed up by a wavy hedge.

Le Jardin Plume was named after the effect of vertical grasses around the garden. Here they are joined by asters and drying-out Actaea in a selection of plants that celebrates the vertical and wavy, with no large flower heads.



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