Country Life: Gardens of the Cote d'Azur

Your flight from London Heathrow will arrive at Nice Côte d’Azur airport at 14:40. From here we transfer to Le Clos du Peyronnet, a beautifully planted garden created by three generations of Waterfields on an old citrus grove, watered by successive pools and dropping to the Mediterranean below. Continue to Hotel Maybourne Riviera, on the rocky peninsula of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, with time to settle in before dining together.

We start the day visiting La Serre de la Madone. In the 1920s Lawrence Johnston, creator of the world famous Hidcote Garden in the English Cotswolds, made this equally beautiful if not superior garden in a steep valley among the pine-clad hills behind Menton. The garden was sensitively restored in the 1990s.  We then dip a toe into Italy to visit Villa Boccanegra, famously associated with Ellen Willmott, whose lavish style of gardening at Warley Place in Essex and then on the Riviera emptied her ample purse. For the past few decades, Boccanegra has been the home of Ursula Salghetti Drioli, who will host a private lunch and guide us through her garden.  In the afternoon we visit Les Colombières, finished in 1927. Its first owners, Emile and Caroline-Octavie Ladan-Bockairy, asked their friend Ferdinand Bac to create a majestic house and garden inspired by Classical Antiquity and Mediterranean art of living.  This evening we dine together overlooking the Bay of Menton at the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Mirazur, crowned best restaurant in the world in 2019. Enjoy the distinctive 1930s style décor and culinary garden before our return to Hotel Maybourne Riviera.

This morning we are joined by James Basson, an exciting new English garden designer working along the Riviera who is greatly influenced by Olivier Filippi, pioneer of the art of dry gardening. James will show us a private garden near Antibes in the morning and, following lunch together in a local restaurant, he will introduce us to a private garden near Grasse. We continue to Chateau Saint-Martin with time to settle in before a delicious evening meal together at the hotel.

Three gardens enliven our journey to Grasse. At Domaine du Prieuré, owner, Joanna Millar shows us her charming, terraced garden. On the outskirts of Grasse, we visit La Mouissone as guests of Lady Maggie Locket, who invites us to lunch and to view her developing garden. Nearby is Villa Fort France, originally planted by Lady Fortescue in the 1930s and now owned and gardened by artist Valerie de Courcel, who lovingly tends the narrow olive terraces around the villa. The making of this enigmatically named garden is related in Winifred Fortescue’s bestselling book ‘Perfume from Provence’, published in 1935. We then return to Chateau Saint-Martin with time to absorb the beauty of this very special hotel before an evening meal included at the restaurant.

We spend the morning at the Villa Euphrussi de Rothschild, where the part formal, part wildly romantic gardens created for Baronesse Béatrice de Rothschild in the early years of the twentieth century frame outstanding views of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. An informal lunch at the Royal Riviera Hotel brings our tour to a suitably glamorous, relaxed conclusion. Return to Nice Côte d’Azur airport for your flight home.