For most people, their image of rural France is one of sunflowers, blue skies and meals outside on sunny terraces.
Clearly, they have not been here in winter, when a very different world exists.
We saw our house in sunny September, put in an offer and then came to have another look around in December – barely three months later.
We were confronted by thick, enduring fog, damp air and temperatures below freezing for the duration of our stay. At least we knew what we were buying into.
What your seasons are like depends, of course, on where in France you live. And where you live determines what you can grow and your preparation for winter.
Here in the Gironde we are blessed with a generally mild, but frequently damp, oceanic climate.
However, winter temperatures can plunge and about 15 years ago we experienced a botanically devastating -15C. At this time of year, we need to prepare for the worst.
We grow lemon trees in pots and leave them outside year round. We find that the trees are happier outside, but to protect them we choose a sunny and sheltered corner – in our case against a south-west facing wall – and insulate them well.
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The sides of the pots are wrapped in bubble wrap, but we leave the base unwrapped so the soil can still drain freely.
Then we make a tent of horticultural fleece to cover the branches. I find that all I need to do is drape the fleece over the thorny branches and staple it tightly shut so that it cannot blow off.
This allows the plant enough light and moisture while protecting it from the worst of the weather. This method has not been tested against a temperature of -15C, but it has worked for the past 10 years.
Sue Adams
We have grown a calamondin outside, in the ground, against a south-facing wall successfully. The fruit of this citrus tree resembles a cross between a mandarin orange and a kumquat. It is extremely bitter and we never ate it or cooked with it, but the small oranges always attracted interest from guests.
We also have a banana tree, again against a south-west facing wall. It produced fruit in 2023, but they never grew to an edible size. It survives the winter, but we leave the dead and dying leaves on the plant and tie them in to act as natural insulation. One year it was cut back to soil level by the frost – but sprang back the following year.
In the orchard most plants shed their leaves and lose any remaining fruit or nuts over the winter – the exception being our crab apples which we grow for their attractiveness and to make jelly. They lure birds who peck at the softening fruit over the winter.
A hard frost is no bad thing in the orchard as it will kill pests. Our fig trees appear undisturbed by whatever a Girondine winter throws at them.
When we first moved to France – in 2005 – we lived on endive throughout the winter as it seemed to be the principal leafy vegetable on every market stall.
Today, a much wider range of vegetables are grown throughout the winter. Notable additions are parsnips – known as panais in French – and, to my husband’s dismay, Brussels sprouts.
Traditional French winter vegetables are blette (or chard), kales and winter salads, leeks and root vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes, navets (small turnips) and of course winter radishes (radis d’hiver), those long, alien-looking black roots you can spot on market stalls at this time of year.
