
Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Writer, gardener, and tastemaker Sharon Santoni resides in Normandy, France. She created MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME Travel Tours to offer guests a peek into real French living.
Even though she has lived in Normandy, France, for almost three decades, Sharon Santoni, founder of My French Country Home, never tires of exploring the treasures of her region and the country beyond. British born and raised, Sharon has always had a curiosity for other cultures that has led to a life abroad.
After a few requests from My French Country Home readers, Sharon decided to share her travel experiences in a more personal way. She created tours that allow her followers to take part in France’s treasures firsthand. Sharon expertly plans each portion with her personal knowledge earned over the years. Her goal is to share a behind-the-scenes look at France and with that, an appreciation for life and all its beauty.
In a past issue of FLOWER, we visited Sharon’s home in Normandy, and the story remains one of our most popular garden features. We recently caught up with Sharon to talk about what’s happening in the garden now, the pleasures of travel, and My French Country Home Travel Tours.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
When winter comes and nothing is in bloom, Sharon eagerly awaits the day when the first snowdrops appear in February. When spring arrives, the garden will look lush and green as pictured here.
FLOWER: We’re in the middle of winter right now so most of us are in a planning and prepping phase with our gardens. What’s happening at your home and garden this season? Are there any projects that you’re particularly excited about sharing?
Sharon Santoni: Once the dahlias finish at the end of October, the garden is dormant. That’s when we mulch heavily and take a moment to move a few things around. It’s mostly a moment for dreaming and planning for the year ahead—I love it.
We’ve got a lot of projects in the garden to look forward to this year. The first things to show in our garden are the snowdrops in February and then the daffodils in March, followed by the big magnolia. Each year, I try to bring in something new to the garden. This year, we’re putting in some new topiaries. We had to cut down one of our big trees, which has opened up a new vista in the garden. For a couple of months, we looked at the open space from different angles and thought of which spots would work best. I’ve been doing drawings, trying to imagine what it could look like. I’m hoping to put that down in February. That’s a little bit late, but I’m hoping to get away with it.
Sometimes, I bring in a fairly large quantity of something we already had. Two years ago, I planted 300 irises. Last year, my husband talked me into planting gladioli, which I never thought I would do, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Every year, we put down hundreds of dahlias.
Because I don’t have a greenhouse, I have to be realistic about what is actually going to get done each year. I always order too many seeds, but the seeds are so easy to plant. I always do cosmos. Last year, the zinnia did really well. They’re a great one for popping into the ground when that first flush of Nigella has finished flowering.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Sharon admits that she's spoiled by living only 20 minutes from the luscious and inspiring garden of Claude Monet in Giverny.
What’s a favorite garden that you have visited?
One of my favorite gardens up here in Normandy would be the Château du Champ de Bataille. It’s a really remarkable property that belongs to a Frenchman named Jacques Garcia, who is also an interior designer. He has such an amazing eye for perspective and design. He bought and began renovating a chateau when the massive “millenium” storm hit, and he lost 400 trees overnight. He hadn’t planned to do the garden until later, but when he woke up that morning and saw the carnage, he realized he would need to do the gardens at the same time as the renovations.
Jacques is incredibly clever and created everything to be symmetrical. He built a hill with a canal in the garden and measured it in such a way that if you walk up the hill to the end of the canal and turn around, it looks like the chateau at the other end is sitting on the water of the canal.
He’s also planted hedges which were about 20 to 30 feet high, and they are beautifully shaped on the top with scallops and arabesques. I believe it’s the largest privately owned, maintained garden in Europe. It’s quite remarkable, but he’s very modest about his work.
I’m also 20 minutes from Monet’s Garden, so I’m kind of spoiled. In the South of France, there’s a garden I love called Le Pavillion de Gallon, which you can’t see unless you know the owner. It’s a much smaller affair, and it’s very botanical. The combination of plants, with their fragrances and the color scheme, is amazing.
Beyond garden and home, travel has become an important part of My French Country Home. How would you describe the role that travel has played in your life?
Well for starters, I’m British and I live in France. My children were all born here in France. We’re definitely a double-cultured family, which is fun. We even lived in India for a couple of years and loved every minute of it.
For me, travel isn’t about going to a town and ticking off the list of the things you’ve got to do. It’s about discovering cultures. It’s about meeting people—if you don’t meet people, it doesn’t mean anything. That is really my obsession with the trips we organize through My French Country Home Travel Tours. I want to give our clients a true experience of the culture. We bring them to private homes and private gardens. We introduce them to flower producers, artists, and others that work with a craft and passion. We want them to have a real encounter, a real moment. They get to have an insight into that person’s life.
I’m personally not interested in traveling somewhere purely as a tourist. It’s a privilege to be able to dip into real daily living. Anybody can come with a guidebook and go and see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but the contacts we have are for the people with curious minds that want to dig a little deeper.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Travelers enjoy a lunch set in a private home on a tour in Dordogne.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Guests often discover many treasures while at Chatou, the antique fair in Paris, like these blue-and-white chinoiserie ceramics.
Why do you think it’s important for people to take time to travel and to do it well?
Don’t you think this world would be a better place if we all had a better understanding of each other? So many problems come from misunderstanding other cultures. It blinds us to who the people are behind our perceptions. When people have the opportunity to learn a language, it really opens a window onto that culture. If you are lucky enough to travel and you happen to know even a little bit of the language of the country you’re going to, that’s immediately going to create bridges. It’s for the enjoyment of seeing beauty, finding ideas, and discovering the world in the same way that you might if you picked up a really beautiful book.
You’ve been sharing the delights of the region through My French Country Home Travel tours for more than 10 years. Tell us how that began.
Everything I do here started as a blog in 2010 when I was a stay-at home mom. I had four kids and the youngest one was 13, so I was starting to feel redundant and pretty useless. Inspired by a friend’s blog, I decided to have a go. I didn’t know if anybody was going to read my posts, but I was lucky and quickly found a wonderful, mostly American audience organically. Back in those blogger days, there wasn’t a commercial aspect. We weren’t doing newsletters or time-consuming social media posts. We had more time to create content and to write. I published on the blog every single day for the first three years, which was a huge commitment. I felt like I was feeding a hungry animal.
One of the things I talked about every week was going to the local brocante and to the little country antique fairs in the surrounding villages. Every Sunday morning, I’d set off at dawn with a little map, and I’d come back with my car loaded with all sorts of stuff—some good, some less good. I just loved it— it was really my moment. It became great content for the blog as well because I’d take photos of everything I brought back. I started getting emails from my readers asking if they could come with me. And I thought, how can I possibly make that happen?
The very first tour I did was, coincidentally with a lady who had already had a tour set up of her own. She asked me if I would be a guest host for her trip. This gave me insight on how tours could be organized. The experience gave me the confidence to say, “I think I could make this happen.” With a happy turn of luck, I found a rather wonderful chauffeur, and the next year he introduced me to a pal. Those two chauffeurs have pretty much accompanied us ever since. I wouldn’t go without them. They’re really wonderful, bilingual, and unflappable. You can throw anything at them and them and they will say, “Yeah, that’s fine. We’ll sort it out.”
For the first few years, I just did what we called our brocante tour, which had an emphasis on antique buying. It would coincide with the big antiques fair at Chatou on the west of Paris. With my growing confidence, I started offering tours elsewhere in France.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Dordogne, known for its many well-preserved medieval structures, offers charming gardens to tour that are rooted in history.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Guests stay in beautiful hotels along the way like the La Colombe d'Or in Saint-Paul de Vence pictured above. These hotels often come with lovely garden spaces and their very own interesting history and design.
Your tours are known for sharing these remarkable, exclusive experiences. What kind of activities should people expect on a My French Country Home tour?
All the things I love to do! I put together the trips as if I was putting together a special week for me with a friend. I just do the things I really want to do. It has to come from the heart. It has to be authentic.
In 2025, we have eight tours planned. They never get bigger than 12 because of my 2 cars. We always include gardens. We generally include some kind of floral design atelier. We always create a beautiful table on one of the evenings. We go to beautiful hotels, but it’s not about the bling. There’s nothing pompous about it. It really is a moment of shared enjoyment.
This year we’re kicking off with antique buying in March. Then we’re going to the French Riviera to visit gardens. For the first time, we’re taking a trip to England for the Chelsea Flower Show and to see the Cotswold gardens. We’ll be taking a tour to Brittany and Normandy as well, and we go to Provence every year. In 2026, we’ll be going to Morocco! That trip will have an emphasis on the design and craftsmanship there.
Besides flowers and gardens, there’s a lot about antiques and food—we always eat well. And there’ll be wine and champagne for sure.
Sometimes, we do a talk on photography or offer a watercolor class. We may include a moment to create a bouquet from flowers they’ve collected. There’s a big emphasis on creativity and enjoying the moment, but we also try to be as flexible as possible. Real friendships are made on these trips. This sort of magic chemistry happens when these individual travelers have been drawn together by the lure of France.

Photo courtesy of MY FRENCH COUNTRY HOME
Sharon fosters an environment of enjoyment and creativity by offering tutorials that range from watercolor to flower arranging. Eating well is also on the agenda. Above, the greenhouse at Domaine de Primard, Normandy is set for a beautiful meal.
You have some remarkable hosts on these trips. Tell us what you look for in a host and who some of the hosts are for the current season.
I look for hosts who are going to be fun to be with. I want somebody who loves to share and who can bring a real talent to the table. We bring people who will inspire our guests.
Whenever I invite a co-host to join me, the theme of the tour will often be influenced by their specialties. This year, I’ve got one tour with the American photographer Jamie Beck, who lives in Provence. It’ll focus on her floral designs and tips on taking photos. When we go to England, I’ll be in the company of Lucy Hunter, who is also a floral artist and garden designer. Visiting gardens with a garden designer beside us is a fantastic addition.
In September of this year, we’ll be touring with a very gifted floral artist named Janne Ford. She’s a photographer and a floral designer. Next year when we go to Morocco, I will be joined by photographer Frank Schmitt. He’s great fun to be with, and he’s been going to Morocco twice a year for 10 to 15 years. He has a really thorough knowledge of the artisan craftsmanship there. He’s also got a great eye for design, and I know he’s going to be a lot of fun on the trip—that’s what I’m looking for. Who can bring their expertise? And their big smile and their laughter as well!
“You have to find the balance between giving people plenty to do in the day without letting them get to the end of the week thinking, ‘Wow, that was intense. I need a holiday.’ There needs to be moments in the day when they’ve got some downtime. The hotels we stay at often have beautiful grounds, and guests sometimes appreciate relaxing in their rooms, running a bath, or taking a book and going out into the garden somewhere.”
—Sharon Santoni
What upcoming tours are you particularly excited about?
I’m very excited about the one to England because it’s the first time we’re going. We already have a waitlist for 2026! I love all of our tours because, as I said, we’re doing activities that I like to do. When we kick off the year in March, I’ll be introducing my guests to a lot of my favorite antiques dealers, which is always a fun moment because those are addresses that you would never find on your own. The day we spend at Chatou is always a wonderful day because we get to the fair around 10, and we just stay for as long as we want. We don’t try to stick together. People can wander around on their own. There are probably 200 0r 300 vendors at Chatou. I always look forward to that.
I’m also very excited about the Riviera Tour. This is the first time we’re taking clients to the French Riviera, and we’ll be seeing the gardens all along the way. You can browse all of our upcoming tours and request brochures on the My French Country Home Travel Tours website.

Photo by Morio60 | Flickr
While on tour in Brittany, guests visit Kerdalo Gardens which is home to a diverse collection of flora.
What do you hope people will take away from experiencing one of your tours?
I hope that by the end they’ll be able to say, “Wow, I saw a side of France that I’ve never seen before. I really got a peek behind the scenes. I got to go inside their gardens and their homes. I’ve really seen a very special side of France, and I’ve seen some real beauty.” Visiting gardens is so meaningful because gardeners love to share. By going inside somebody’s garden, you’re taking a little step into their lives. It leads to interesting conversations and real moments of sharing.
Last year, we were lucky enough to visit the private atelier of a garden designer called Dominique Lafourcade. She’s a very talented lady in the South of France. She welcomed us into her garden and into her home for a full tour. She took us down into her creative workshop. It was a huge room with watercolors. When I took my clients there, everybody went quiet. It was quite extraordinary, and one of my clients came to me at the end and she said, “Sharon, that was a life-changing moment for me.” Hearing that that was absolutely thrilling to me.
UPCOMING TOURS
Click to learn more about any of the 2025 tours!
A Note From Sharon
At the front of each edition of My French Country Home, we include a regional guide where we’ll take a deep dive either into a region or a town and talk about the history of the place, what to see, what to do, where to stay, where to eat, etc. It’s for those who want to be guided by us but don’t want to be part of a tour. We also offer itineraries and travel guides which people can buy. They are great for traveling because they give you a day-by-day program. It tells you exactly which restaurant to try, what hotel is great, and where to find certain shops. People can enjoy all the tips that I would be giving if they were traveling with me.
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Produced by Carrie Clay | Photography courtesy of My French Country Home