This little area of my new garden at our farm in Langley , B.C. is going to be one year old this summer !! Yes, ONE year old. I wanted to create a ‘French look’ , which I have long admired in gorgeous books and magazine articles. I used ‘easy’  plants, like Hebes, dwarf  boxwoods, a small-leaved willow (Salix purpurea ‘Nana’), woolly lamb’s ear (Stachys lanata), thymes, and the star of all, the cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) rising in a sculptural silver fountain. An important element of this garden is the gravel. It is not grey. It is a soft pinky -tan colour, and is called  ’peach shale’. Our local landscape yard used to sell it, in two different sizes. Now they don’t. I guess it was too attractive. But, my partner Brent got us four truckloads of it (by begging) brought directly to us from Alberta. It looks better than our dreary local ‘crush’ gravel – we have lots of grey days already. For soil, we dumped lots of purchased ‘topsoil’ and composted mushroom  manure in situ, to raise the land up about one foot. I am relatively lazy, and did not dig it in. I like to plant on a ‘nice pie’ and always find it easiest to plant impulsively with no plan or drawing whatsoever. That is letting creativity flow . The plants fall together intuitively and I never second guess placement. It is like oil painting – each dab of paint is final. Fussing and torturing yourself with shifting and re-doing things kills creativity. So,  make yourself a ‘ jin toneek’ and create a French gravel garden of your own somewhere in the sun!