Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Barbara Haddock Taylor

Garden Variety was busy last week working on a fun piece for The Sun's new home section.

It is about designers, and how they don't travel like the rest of us. They travel with purpose!

Among those I interviewed were Pierre and Nancy Moitrier of Designs for Green Gardens in Annapolis, a free-spirited couple who decribe themselves as "gardeners" not "landscapers." They are not about manicured lawns and perfectly groomed hedges.

Pierre and Nancy travel often to France, where his family lives, and they love to visit the old villages there. The ancient castles and monasteries inspired Pierre's love of "ruin gardens," and he carried that vision to one of his recent clients, building a whimsical garden gate of stone and installing a mirror that makes the garden seem to go on forever.

Read all about them, and interior designers Mona Hajj and Rita St. Clair. Then visit the photo gallery of their creations.

And then you can take a tour of one of Pierre and Nancy's favorite places, Jardins du Prieure d'Orsan, a bed and breakfast established in a 900-year-old monastery and the extraordinary garden "rooms" around it.

(For a look at the garden before the new installation, keep reading.)