Festival of plants

Every year on Ascension day, which is a major bank holiday in France, the small village of Bergères hosts a garden festival. It’s a beautiful village, nestled amongst the vineyards, and only about a 20 minute drive from us.

Visitors travel from all around to view, and buy, a wide selection of excellent quality plants. Even though there are only 3 routes in and out of the village we were amazed at how well they managed to organise the cars and parking. I imagined queues, or having to walk miles to reach the village, but they were using walkie talkies to communicate with each other, and it all went very smoothly.

The festival was brilliant, it felt like our own mini version of ‘the Chelsea Flower Show’ here in sunny Champagne. It is clear that the villagers take huge pride in their own gardens, and it’s wonderful to see some of their ideas and displays. There was a particular gorgeous looking barn, that was literally being held up by a vine.

Amongst all the variety of plant sellers there were also lots of local crafts being demonstrated and all sorts of garden products, tools, garden furniture, garden statues, and of course some local delicious food delights.

The atmosphere was fun and carefree, with all ages enjoying the live music, whether it was the American rock band on their pushbikes designed to carry their instruments and made to look like Harley Davidsons or chopper bikes, or the local marching band from Bar-sur-Seine playing the Star Wars theme music, it was all throughly entertaining, and we had an absolutely fabulous afternoon.

We will definitely be visiting again next year.