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Garden plants via car ferry .


Burch family

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We are planning to buy some garden bushes such as camelias , magnolias etc for our house in SW France .

Are there customs restrictions on taking these in our car via Brittany Ferries in April ?

If they are not allowed how likely are we to be stopped by French customs personnel at St Malo ?
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I asked about this the other way round last summer, as we thought of taking our enormous laurier rose back to England via Switzerland, as I tknow they are poisonous. In fact we didn't do so in the end, as the friend we were calling in on en route in Switzerland was rather poorly, and she asked us to take so many of her clothes etc with us, that we ended up with a full car.

I contacted DEFRA, who were very helpful. Since then I've been told that most plants are OK, but such things as snowdrops can be a problem area. I suppose also it's a balance between plants you love and whether they would settle in a different climate as well as different soil.

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Anecdotal eveidence suggests you are unlikely to have any problems with customs although there is a very long list of plants that cannot be brought into France without special certification including Rhodadendron, Azelea, Cottoneaster.  If you are concerned then put phytosantaire annex V into a French search engine (Google.fr, Yahoo.fr etc) and you should with some digging find the full list of plants - most of which are extremely exotic.
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[quote user="Jay"][quote user="Gardener"]Avoid pampas, it is banned from sale in many places.[/quote]

We were thinking of putting pampas in our garden - why is it banned?
[/quote]

 

The only way to remove it when it has grown too big is with Semtex

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I was advised to take a pampas out of my garden in South Africa as I was told it 'searched' for water and could attack the water pipes.

It was a new plant I had put in so I never investigated whether that was right, but just took their advice and took it out.

Maybe it would have been fine. I also love the different texture it provided in the garden.

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It is not allowed for sale in some areas of Brittany and Pas de Calais for sure because it spreads like wildfire. There are other invasive plants too http://www.val-de-saire.com/vie_pratique/iso_album/203_362_8pplantesinvasives.pdf

and http://hortimail.over-blog.com/article-17695781.html for example.

I had a pampas in my garden but took it out as it was just harbouring mice. I had lots of off shoots which I offered to neighbours and that was how I found out!

Search under l'herbe de la pampas interdit for more information.

EDIT

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006074220&idArticle=LEGIARTI000022496815&dateTexte=20110331
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It is not so much that it is near the house and may attack the drains, the problem is that it seeds and can spread to areas where it may prejudice native flora. In Finistere there are many areas where it has done this and there are some where it has almost completely replaced native flora (near Lesconil for example). I think it has started to do this only comparatively recently but it is now considered as planta non grata.

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