Two passionate plant enthusiasts have set up a new nursery specialising in rare and unusual plants for shade
WORDS CLAIRE MASSET PHOTOGRAPHS ANNAÏCK GUITTENY
Nursery owners Cédric Basset and Manon Rivière don’t do ordinary: they’ve spent their careers discovering and growing unusual plants. Since January 2020, they have been running Pépinière Aoba in Brittany, France. Aoba means greenery in Japanese, so it’s an apt name for a nursery that specialises in species from Asia, with a focus on foliage, climbing and shade-loving plants. Its range is impressive, with more than 5,000 species, and includes national collections of epimediums, polygonatum, Japanese hydrangeas, species irises and Lardizabalaceae.
Before they set up Aoba, Cédric and Manon each had their own nursery in the east of France, where winters are cold and summers scorching, so it made sense for the couple to combine their two plant catalogues and make the move to milder northern Brittany, where they fell for an old farm with seven acres of land. Over the past four years, they have slowly replanted their stock. The old rapeseed fields, transformed with plantations of saplings, will eventually become a six-acre arboretum.
Under a canopy of established trees, they have created a shade garden filled with epimediums, arisaemas, polygonatums and disporums. Foliage is key element in this area with ferns, begonias and boehmerias, a cousin of the nettle that doesn’t sting.
From the outset, the couple wanted to show their plants growing naturally. “A tree in a pot doesn’t really speak to people,” says Cédric. “You can’t visualise what it will look like. But when you walk past a beautiful styrax in flower in May, you fall for it.” Their plants are unusual, but they’re also easy to look after and hardy. “There’s enough diversity without having to rely on plants that are prone to disease and not very strong.”
Unlike many modern nurseries and plant centres, the couple don’t use pesticides or rely on heated greenhouses. “When I cultivate plants,” explains Cédric, “I don’t want to pollute my soil in the process. Our plants aren’t grown in an artificial environment so they’re not fragile. This also helps to limit parasites, which are far more prevalent
