New rose garden nearly ready.

Those wooden beams are beautiful. Interesting to see what you are up to!

hi resi - looks like you're getting there :)
It's going to be really lovely!...don't you find that things take around three years to get established and then go mad? lol!
...and such a stunning location, wonderful views :)

I agree you have a very pretty area to call home and your rose garden is really coming along well...such a difference to looking out on straw and a maintenance area for your plants.

It must have been hard work transporting those heavy stones back to your garden....I hope you had some way of doing that without causing yourself an injury!

Good luck with your plans for the herb garden and I hope the soil loosens a bit for you so you can put your finishing touches to the rose garden soon.

I love rocks! How wonderful (if back-breaking) to be able to pick up those stones from round about. It's going to be great, Resi - keep on blogging!

Btw, if it's ground cover you're after, I've found Woodruff spreads brilliantly (Galium odoratum) even on very dry soil.

Looking good Resi! Love the wood on the raised beds.

thanks Lulu and Karen, more like 5 yearts here and still hard work apart from the Stachys and the euphorbias LOL
yes we are soo lucky to be able to live in this part of the world, it is stunning AND empty, no motorways or dual carriage ways even, no industry apart from agriculture and little tourism in the summer only.
villages which havent been prettified and still look like 100 yrs ago, i will stop now... getting carried away here.
thanks for the woodruff tip Sheila, however i think that is more of a dry shade plant but i will head it under my suggestions for gr cover and try different plants there and see which does best, everything is still experimental in my garden
yes Nariz and Lulu i keep finding lovely uses for all the wood we have around, this is the nice part of finishing with the most backbreaking part of establishing and beginning the real creative proces of gardening now.
the stones arent really from around here , mountain and valley rocks, they must have been used for dwellings which fell down and are just scattered around everywhere, the local stones are no good for gardening with, too soft

Wish you were closer! I have rocks...and rocks...and boulders! I wouldn't mind sharing them. Love what you're doing with the raised beds...I have a couple of those in the planning stages too! Your roses are really coming together for you. As a suggestion, something which is usually easy to grow in dry conditions and has lovely colour is sedum. There are so many types, I'm sure you could find a low growing one. not sure if it's ok for foot traffic, but your idea of chamomile sounds great. I love the stuff and it smells so nice when tread upon! would you use the Roman or German type?

thanks for the idea Lori, i have played with that but have a lot of different sedums on my cliffs, whre they do a brill job, on the flat Jesse races through them whilst hunting her bees and lizards and mice and they would snap of so quickly
i have slightly gone off chamomile, but might put those around my herb beds instead, the roman variety as the plants are lower
Drc726 came up with phlox subulata emerald cushion, which i like the sound of and the colour! and i know it does well around here, and more to the point i can actually buy it here!
but those ideas are still cooking..

Yes rock cress is a rockerie staple here too.

Lovely views resi. Your garden is full of character and determination. A lot of plants go anywhere in the world. Though it is getting much stricter about exchanges of plant material of any kind from one country to another.

Are you planting any grapes? I love the idea of a loggia shaded by vines, with a big table and a convivial group of family and friends gathered, eating local food and garden produce, and planty of wine. That's my vision of France.

No i havent planted any grapes yet Dorjac, they need a southerly aspect and my terrace is N.E facing, a trellis on a south facing side of the house is one of my projects in waiting and when that is up i will plant some grapevines, to go with those lovely, boozy big french meals!!

You have done there a lot of good work. Enjoy your new garden.

Your garden is coming together nicely Resi. Lovely to see someone get back to us with an ongoing project. Your blog is a reminder to YOU and a connection with us Goyers to see someone try to reach a dream garden. I was reading Jared Diamond's book with the miserable title 'Collapse'. On Easter Island, and in other parts of the arrid world, they have used stones effectively to conserve moisture and plant in the damper pockets between them. So your stone gathering is worth all the effort. Good luck with the rest of your project.

Dorjac, Resi recently wrote she is leaving this house and garden.

Ah that is a bit disapointing to hear Katarina. Some people don't mind a lot of hard work, then a fairly rapid move to yet another project. We did a huge garden project with mighty hard work attached, then we sold up, as we had a good offer for the land we slaved over. That was well over 25 years ago now. We enjoyed that garden for about 12 years after it was finished.