Last weekend was the ‘European Days of Heritage’. It’s a wonderful chance to see some of the sites that aren’t always open to public or just not very well known.

Visiting out-of-the-way ‘manoirs’ & ‘chartreuses’ always surprises me. Not just the amount of restoration & rebuilding that has gone on in the Dordogne these last twenty years but also, more quietly & lesser well-known, just how many charming gardens have been sculpted, imagined & manicured. The above garden is an innovative version of a ‘potager classique’ (like the famous Chateau de Villandry) but with a hydralic feature like a feature from the Alhambra. The owner explained to me that sound of gurgling water made the exprience of gardening on a south facing slope more ‘agréable’.

I did a watercolour of the very french formal facade & formally laid-out gardens. But it wasn’t finished, felt like a rush-job & well, why expect very single watercolour to come together successfully first-take, alla prima?