Serre de la Madone, in the hills above Menton, was created by Lawrence J
Serre de la Madone, in the hills above Menton, was created by Lawrence Johnston, the American-British garden maker who also made Hidcote Manor Garden in the Cotswolds. Johnston began work at Serre de la Madone in 1924, and it became his winter garden — a Mediterranean complement to Hidcote, with a very different climate, palette and plant collection, but the same fundamental approach: serious horticulture, careful composition and a plantsman's eye for the unusual and the exceptional.
For travellers who know Hidcote, Serre de la Madone is a revealing comparison. The enclosed rooms and structural hedges give way to open terraces and pools. The English cottage-garden plants give way to subtropical texture, palms, agapanthus, cannas, cistus and collections of bulbs and climbers gathered from Johnston's plant-hunting travels. The two gardens share a sensibility but express it through entirely different means.
The garden fell into decline after Johnston's death in 1958 and was restored from the 1990s onwards. It is now managed by the Conservatoire du Littoral and is one of the most important historic gardens on the French Riviera. Visiting it on a guided tour gives access to a level of detail — about Johnston's plant choices, his travels and the relationship between Serre de la Madone and Hidcote — that is impossible to achieve independently.