Upon first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the garden at Audrey Heburn’s Swiss villa, La Paisible. A photo from 1971 shows the actress casually strolling along, pushing her son, Luca, in a carriage. through the wild outdoor space. Totally normal, right?
Our resident Master Gardener, Rachel Bull, knows better. What appears to the untrained eye to be a random grouping of trees is a flourishing fruit orchard, and what looks to me like a tangle of weeds is actually a covert vegetable patch including onions (with seeds available from Amazon). Though the pair seem like strange bedfellows, the combination of orchard and vegetable patch works symbiotically, bolstering one another’s growth.
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Audrey Hepburn in the garden of her Tolochenaz, Switzerland home, 1971
(Image credit: Henry Clarke via Getty Images)
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Rachel explains the fascinating connection between the two distinct parts of Audrey’s garden. She states: ‘You might think it unusual to stumble across a hidden vegetable patch in a mature fruit tree orchard, but the idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. This kind of companion planting can help to improve the soil, reduce weeds, and control pests in a natural way that serves to strengthen the surrounding ecosystem. It’s often a symbiotic relationship, with the trees helping to fertilize and enrich the surrounding soil, and vegetable crops adding nutrients or acting as groundcover to help suppress weed growth.’
Though there are dozens of plant options you can use to recreate Audrey’s results, growing onions is one of the easiest places to start.
Rachel advises: ‘Here, we can see onions growing in the small veg patch Audrey Hepburn stands in front of. Onions are a fantastic organic pest control, as their strong smell will deter aphids and burrowing creatures, such as moles and voles. They also have a shallow root system, so are useful for planting under trees as they don’t require a large amount of soil in which to grow healthily.’
Audrey Hepburn’s companion planting is an important reminder that the wisest garden schemes aren’t always the most obvious. Even something as opaque as a vintage black-and-white photograph can be a generative jumping-off point for planting ideas with the right eye.
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