The pale-pink climbing rose ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ was named after Joséphine Bonaparte’s estate near Paris where the empress grew some 250 varieties of roses.
Joséphine also planted Australian trees such as acacia, melaleuca and eucalyptus and kept kangaroos, emus and black swans as well as zebras and llamas, among other exotic animals.
Sarah Pinon is something of an exotic transplant herself. She grew up in rural Brittany in northwest France and as a child spent much of her spare time working on her parents’ 80ha farm.
She now lives far from France in Dardanup, a small town in Western Australia’s fertile Ferguson Valley, where kangaroos roam freely in the backyard.
Sarah celebrates her European childhood by growing the likes of hollyhocks and, of course, the magnificent ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ that adorns the…
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Good Organic Gardening (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue #13.1 - 2022