MEETING - Wednesday 15 April 2009
Helen McCabe : HOUSES & GARDENS OF NORMANDY
In her lecture Mrs McCabe will be looking at
Le Bois des Moutiers, an Arts and Craft house by Lutyens with gardens by Jekyll
Chateau de Mesnil-Geoffroy - an 18th century chateau with lovely furnished interiors and magnificent rose garden
Chateau de Miromesnil set in magnificent parkland and with a well planted potager close to the house
Le Vasterival which has a truly great garden
Le Clos du Coudray with its many different "rooms", packed with plants and good ideas.
Helen McCabe writes
‘I will discuss a wide range of architecture including the 15th century fortified Chateau d’Harcourt shown in the photograph.
I try to evoke the Normandy of the rich greens of field and forest, the whites of apple blossom and chalk cliffs, the blues of the sea and of fields of flax.
There are some wonderful gardens: formal parterres, great avenues of beech and lime, potagers laid out with fruit, vegetables and flowers, and rose gardens stocked with French and English roses. We will see how Normandy’s houses and gardens reflect France’s history and culture and how our medieval past is inextricably linked with that of Normandy.’
Lecturer: Helen McCabe read French at university and studied history of art and architecture at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She is a Francophile and loves Normandy in particular because of its historic links with England and its similar climate. She grew up near Lands End and has returned to live in her childhood home where she has restored her walled garden and planted a woodland stream garden. Helen now lectures on English and French Country House Architecture and Garden Design. She has advised NADFAS societies on successful itineraries in Normandy and has written three books, one of which is “Houses and Gardens of Cornwall” –Tabb House 1996