Turning an Abandoned Water Tank into a Greenhouse

Did you know that we’ve started a new YouTube channel? It’s called The Lost Gardens of Chateau de Rosieres and it’s focussed entirely on our attempts to return the Chateau’s 130 acres of land back to their former glory and make the estate productive, self-sufficient and beautiful. We started this channel as something a bit different to the chateau renovation channels that are already out there (including our own). The videos are more detailed and in-depth, exploring the full process of our work outdoors. We recognised that much of our audience sought greater insight into our processes, especially on our gardening and self-sufficiency projects, so this is our answer!

So far we’ve covered the planting of new vineyards, repairing monumental stone walls that hold the formal terraces, beginning a sub-tropical sunken garden, and starting work on two incredible antique greenhouse projects. We’ve also almost finished the famous eco-sewage ponds that were featured on Channel 4’s Chateau: DIY show several years ago. What a saga that has been!

This week we launched the first video in a series that will follow Marc turning an abandoned water tank into a working greenhouse and technical room. This will not only put part of the chateau estate’s historical fabric back into use, and rescue a demolished greenhouse structure from another site, but it will allow us to be far more ambitious with our propagation of plants in future. This week we do a bit of surveying and engineering to design the building and start laying the foundations. We think it’s a fascinating project and one of a kind. We hope you’ll join us on the journey.

As ever, we would be extremely grateful for your support in visiting both channels and subscribing. We work so hard at producing these videos and documenting our work in an interesting and hopefully entertaining way. Making a success of YouTube could dramatically accelerate our ability to return this beautiful, historic estate to full use, and allow us to open up to the public. Thank you in advance!

Just a reminder, these are our two channels and what they’re about:

The Chronicles of Chateau de Rosieres: Restoration and Renovation of the main chateau and buildings, and snippets of everyday family life in the French countryside and a medieval castle. Recent videos have focussed on the search for hidden cellars, and the restoration of the Chateau’s historic coach house. The latter has involved making our own ceramic tiles and disguising modern building additions by plastering with natural pigments.

The Lost Gardens of Chateau de Rosieres: Restoring the enormous chateau estate to its 18th Century heydey of self-sufficiency and productivity. Plus creating fantastic, formal gardens. So far we’ve covered the planting of new vineyards, repairing monumental stone walls that hold the formal terraces, beginning a sub-tropical sunken garden, and starting work on two incredible antique greenhouse projects. We’ve also almost finished the famous eco-sewage ponds that were featured on Channel 4’s Chateau: DIY show several years ago. What a saga that has been!