Villandry is best known, at least abroad, as France's archetypal potager, a kitchen garden elevated to a regal plain and Frenchified to the maximum, with its seemingly endless geometric parterres edged in immaculately clipped boxwood. This, at least, is the impression I had of the garden before I visited. In fact, the potager forms only part of what in fact is a painstaking and loving restoration of the gardens of a Renaissance château, fraught with romantic symbolism and amenities--or agréments, as the French would call them, features designed for pure pleasure. The potager, for example, is punctuated with numerous latticework gloriettes, or gazebos, whose curved form provide great intimacy to those within as they gaze upon the softly splashing fountain before them. The moment I saw them, I thought of them as lovers' bowers. (Source: FrenchGardening.com)

Roseraie du Val-de-Marne or Roseraie de L'Haÿ is a garden devoted to roses established in 1899 on rue Albert Watel in L'Haÿ-les-Roses, Val-de-Marne, France. About 8 km south of Paris, it was created by landscape architect Édouard François André and rosarian Jules Gravereaux (1844-1916) and claims to be the first ever garden dedicated exclusively to roses. Laid out in thirteen formal sections, today Roseraie du Val-de-Marne has a total of 13,100 rose bushes featuring 3200 species and varieties. The garden has modern French and foreign roses on one side, the formal rose garden with a reflecting pool in the center, and the old garden roses and classic roses on the other side. There is a dark red, hybrid rugosa rose bred in France by Commandeur Jules Gravereaux (1901) named Roseraie de L'Hay. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Versailles is the most famous garden in the world. Yet 'garden' is scarcely a fitting designation. The scale is monumental and there is little sense of enclosure. Versailles was designed as a palatial centre of government for an absolute monarch, Louis XIV. It is resplendent as the prime example of the French Baroque style, but it is not a friendly place. 'Overbearing' is a common description and English critics have often been disenchanted with the place. Walpole saw Versailles as 'the gardens of a great child' (H&T). Avenues project from Louis XIV's palace towards distant horizons, enfolding town, palace, garden and forest. There are imaculate parterres, great basins, an orangery, a vast collection of outdoor sculpture and some of the grandest fountains which have ever been made. The park and garden were designed by Andre Le Nôtre between 1661 and 1700. There are magnificient features: huge parterres, an orangery, famous fountains (which operate....), rich bosquets (ornamental groves), a 1.8 km cruciform canal. The Grand Trianon, another formal garden, was built on the site of a former village. Versailles also has later additions. The Petit Trianon was given to Marie-Antoinette in 1774. She favoured the irregular style, with hills, rocks and streams. The Hameau was designed in 1785, as a stage village, for Marie-Antoinette to play with her friends in the idle years before the French Revolution. (Source: GardenVisit.com)

This garden has been a work in progress over the past three years.

Suburban garden. I love flowers - grow as many type of lilies as I can lay my hands on. Have small veggie area about 16' x 8'and this year grew broccoli, cauliflowers, french beans, cucumbers, celery potatoes,peppers and chilli peppers. We grow apples - (wonderful crop - we are eating them at the moment) and soft fruits raspberries, red and black currants.I have a grass garden and a lavender bed. Wouldn't be the most well organised garden in the world but I Love it. I will try anything.

Our garden is not large by French standards, 1800sq meters. There is a lovely cottage garden to the front of the house, to the side is our vegetable plot. We are tring to become self sufficent for most things. Not there yet though.

Beginnings of a cottage style garden. Only a year old.

I started off with a French style garden and now I am concentrating more on attracting bird life by planting trees

Growing mostly native wild with plants for the birds and little animals. several square foot gardens and some french intensive garden boxes that are loosing to the neighbors trees. Pots here and there full of herbs and a salad table on wheels.

We're only growing a few veggies this year. Tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, french green beans, cauliflower, carrots, and a concord grape vine.

Old Westbury Gardens, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the former home of John S. Phipps, his wife, Margarita Grace Phipps and their four children. Completed in 1906 by the English designer, George A. Crawley, the magnificent Charles II-style mansion is nestled amid 200 acres of formal gardens, landscaped grounds, woodlands, ponds and lakes. A side path has a predominance of bearded iris and foxgloves, with columbines and astilbes. Roses are on the walls and in the center of the garden.

2008 was first attempt at gardening here. 2009 was exciting to see what returned in the perennial beds. Sun exposure ranges from full to no sun. Definitely a work in progress :)

We are trying to grow veg in what is normally a very wet climate! ( started 2009) - Most of the pumpkin/squash rotted! We hope to plant wildflowers around the basic lawns and we'll put in a couple of raised beds to save our poor old backs! Tony and I like to experiment growing different produce and varieties and challenging the weather!

We are looking to start a garden with a home that we have renovated and been building on for 4 years, leaving us very little in the way of a garden at present, needing ideas and plants that grow in very sandy (seasand) soil

We are looking to start a garden with a home that we have renovated and been building on for 4 years, leaving us very little in the way of a garden at present, needing ideas and plants that grow in very sandy (seasand) soil

Only experimental beds at this stage. 700sq metres of flat bare garden to plant this year - lots of ideas for 2011

we've lived here for only 6 months...Im looking forward to this spring to begin the base of a beautiful yard for the years to come...shrug, mainly shrub and grass now. significant slope in the back, down to a flat grass space.

4 gardens in all - consisting of North facing walled garden, south facing lawned garden with flower beds planted to attract insects vegetable plot and unadapted field containing 5 cidre apple trees, a pear, two peach one walnut and and a couple of plum trees

Varying areas of garden from east-facing sunny and very dry to south and west facing with good soil on mountain rock. We are at 660m in the Pyrenees. Dry and hot in summer and fairly cold in winter.

Since 1932, nestled on the U.S. and Canadian borders of North Dakota and Manitoba in a symbol of friendship, lies a “One of a Kind” International Peace Garden. Reflecting pools and dazzling colorful floral displays of over 150,000 flowers splash across the grounds of the Formal Garden’s terraced walkways. Source: http://www.peacegarden.com/

A Victorian Built in 1876 On a busy downtown street. Long and narrow A huge Maple as old as the house dominates the front line. So I built 3 stone terraces and planters out of New York Falgstone and filled it for vertical privacy like so many flower baskets. Good variety of perennials and annuals make it interesting all year. Bridle wreath Spirea mixed with Rho dos, small evergreen bushes interspersed with berginia and a variety colorful annuals.

Separate garden rooms

We're building a garden from a scrap waste patch behind our cottage that the landlord was going to concrete. We're taking a very slow, permaculture approach because we've discovered that from where we're starting, we have approx. 6" soil which is a mix of waterlogged mud and heavy clay, onto the old, C16th cottage floor. We're spending little bits on the garden as and when we can and we're cultivating cuttings from local hedgerows and plant-swapping. Our initial plan is to cover as much of the breeze-block wall as possible with flowers and then build raised beds (ideal as I have spine injuries) from the rubble that we've pulled out so far, in which we can far easier manage the soil quality. Last year we had success with carrots; onions (bedford champion); lettuce (lollo rosso) raspberries; roses; cucumber; lavender; and various herbs. We have also introduced a laburnum as a standard and have a little patch of lawn chamomile that's struggling valiantly. This year, we've decided to take a side-step in direction and focus more on growing berries and dedicating the rest of the garden to our birds. We're also hoping to attract more butterflies and bees - especially as there are swarms literally vanishing in our area & we'd quite like to bring some back and maybe start a colony of our own.

Beauty of Moscow French Lilac

Veg plot August 09. Most of potatoes harvested early due to blight. Few French Beans (rest were eaten by critters unknown.) Spring onions beneath. Courgette plants doing well but not producing. Leeks surviving the wet. We are by no means Master Gardeners, but trying hard!

Here is Jacque, my French Marin rooster posed to look like a garden ornament.

This is Jemma, striking a pose like she was a lawn ornament. But it's a real live hen, a french marin and she lays dark brown eggs. She enjoys eating bugs and slugs in my garden.

Tall Bearded Iris French Perfume

Summer 2009. We're guessing the lower level will get more light, so this is where the veggies are this year. The far, oval bed is growing by sections: rocket; radish (french breakfast); spinach (red stem); red cabbage; lettuce (lollo rosso); lettuce (standard loose-leaf); runner beans (last of the strain my Dad has been breeding for years); chilli. The nearer, rectangle bead has: tomatoes, with an aubergine between; then broad beans; then by turns, carrots (standard) & onion (bedford champion).

Banks of azaleas and rhododendrons on both sides of the reflecting pool bloom in every conceivable shade. Hybrids include the white Boule de Neige (French for snowball), Pink Twins and the vivid red Nova Zembla. The Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'dissectum') at the head of the pool and the globose sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum 'globosum') are particularly striking in their crimson autumn foliage. Next to the maple is a mature mountain silver bell tree (Halesia monticola).

French Lilac- Saved and passed through the generations of the Martyn family

French and runner beans popping through the rocket and oak leaf lettuce..........

French Beans left, Runner beans right. We are a bit smug today, impressed ourselves with our first attempt at veg!!

Enorma beans (12 inches long!) Scarlet Emperor, Yellow French type beans, garlic, gherkin cukes, courgette, the only khol rabi that didnt get demolished by slugs, red onions and overgrown red spring onions etc. The yellow round thing is a diddy Munchkin pumpkin and this is as big as they get.