Strawberry fields forever in Hyères is a post about the ups and downs of agriculture in this area of the french Riviera.
” Vegetables are grown in large quantities in the market gardens which lie to the south and west of the town of Hyères.
Vegetables, which are generally enclosed with high stone walls, replace the orange groves which, eighteen years ago, as I learn from Dr Griffith, covered a large portion of the plain.
It does not appear, however, that the disappearance of the orange groves is due to the effects of the climate. It may partly have depended on the ravages of the blight, but according Dr de Valcourt, the competition of the orange trade from Blidah, in Algeria, has made the culture of these trees unprofitable at Hyères.
At any rate, orange trees are now scarcely to be met with, except in a few gardens, while the peach, the plum, the strawberry, and the artichoke have taken their place.
Acres and acres of the small “hautboy” strawberry are grown at Hyères, and supply the Paris market with the earliest pottles, and their cultivation and gathering give employment to a large number of the labouring women.
The gardens are in several places protected from the high winds, especially at the entrance of the valley of Hyères, by dense hedges of tall cypresses, which, with their intense dark green foliage, lend a peculiar character to the landscape. “
This description in Strawberry fields forever in Hyères goes back to …1879. It can be discovered in ” The Riviera”, a book written by Edward Issac Sparks.