Our family holiday this year has been to central France, where we rented a farmhouse together with some friends and relatives.

Based in the countryside somewhere between Limoges and Poitiers, we have spent two weeks exploring rural France.

It is a relaxed and peaceful area - small terracotta roofed towns and villages contrasting wildly with vast, stately chateaux, farmland with crops of vines, walnuts and sunflowers, forests of oak and sweet chestnut, all bathed (I'm pleased to say) in brilliant, continental sunshine.

Temperatures are, on average, at least ten degrees warmer than Cumbria and summers about two months longer.

I have seen many pictures of the chateaux on the River Loire, but this was my first visit.

Although I was not especially taken with the interiors of the chateaux, the exteriors made a splendid backdrop for the formal gardens that surrounded them.

Parterres of box heges filled with thousands of bedding plants, scrolls of clipped santolina on a background of green lawn; vine-covered trellises; avenues of bleached lime and standard hibiscus - the planting is on a grand scale and seems to rely on just a few species and varieties of plants.

Even more impressive are formal kitchen gardens or potagers at Villandry and Chenonceaux.

Here the formal box hedges are filled entirely with vegetables and herbs, immaculately grown and cared for.

Beds of flowers grown for cutting are edged with 'step over' apple trees, while smaller beds of sweet peppers and aubergines are edged with alternating red and white lettuces.

It's an allotment holder's idea of heaven!

In the towns and villages there were impressive displays of bedding plants to brighten up the squares, car parks and roundabouts.

It's easy to see that the climate is kind to annuals by the sheer variety and rude health of the plants.

These included cannas, caster oil plants, nicotianas, bidens, impatiens, petunias, cardoons, bananas, dahlias, salvias and of course lots of red and pink pelargoniums.

Apart from the dusky blues of Perovskia and Caryopteris, which must have been permanent plantings in among the bedding plants, most of the colours used were bold and bright reds, yellows and pinks.

At the top of my list of favourite horticultural sights this year were the fields full of sunflowers, grown for the oil that is produced from their seeds.

The bright yellow patches of sunflower fields dotted across the countryside were such an unexpected and cheerful sight that found myself smiling involuntarily at the sight of them.