Shirley and Dirk’s pristine home and garden in Auvergne
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Auvergne’s rock stars R
egular readers of French Property News may remember reading about our
house-buying journey here in the Puy-de-Dôme, Auvergne- Rhône-Alpes, back in 2022. Two years on, I’m happy to say we have not only renovated our house and the adjoining garage, but the garden has now been transformed too. Having retired here in 2020, we were able to dedicate all our
spare time to completing the very lengthy renovation of ‘La Ruine’, the apt name of our old farmhouse. We were then ready to commence with the garden. Over the years, we’d discussed various ideas from time to time, but had no fixed plans about what to do. There were still mounds
of stone in various areas left over from the collapsed barn, including a few large ones we would never be able to move, along with bed rock. So, our first idea was to create a rockery garden around these large boulders, incorporating a stump left over from the felling of a large tree.
STONE THE CROWS As if we didn’t already have enough stone, every time either of us put a spade in the ground, we found more and more of it. I think we probably moved every stone on the property at least once. Having more stone than we
Shirley and Dirk on an evening out
could ever use, a local farmer came and took a pile of them
66 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: March/April 2025 There were many heaps of stone around the Williams’ property
with a huge tractor and trailer. We had been expecting him but the evening he arrived, we were sitting on the terrace having a nice meal with friends. He also levelled the slope for us but it was clear that we would need to terrace this area as it was too steep. We needed some soil to level it off and a few days later we noticed local council workers clearing ditches not far from us. Dirk flagged the driver down and with limited French
inspiration from readers’ stories
completefrance.com/ living-in-france
Two decades of life in the Auvergne has seen Shirley Williams and her husband, Dirk, completely transform their home, with the latest project being the rock garden
managed to get him to deliver his next lorry full to us and so the task began. Over the years, the boundary
wall at the back of the house had fallen away and was overgrown with brambles and other plants, so we cleared it all and dug out any roots and saplings. Then I built a dry-stone wall, and Dirk added new fencing along the top. Just in front of this, and using more of the soil we had obtained,
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