About us

Au Tilleul is privately owned by Marion Potts and Ned Manning. We live in Sydney, Australia with our two children and have had a longstanding relationship with France - Marion since childhood and Ned since his first visit some twenty years ago. We visited Viens together for the first time in 2013.

We did three decisive things on that visit: we sat in the courtyard of the village’s restaurant Le Petit Jardin while Jean-Francois and his wife Sonia buzzed around restaurant, yelling out orders to the kitchen and serving steaming food and carafes of red and generally charming their patrons. We ordered a pastis and sat in the filtered sunlight and everything felt very calm.

We walked down through the village - vaulted archways and narrow cobbled laneways and rounded a corner. 180 degree views of the Luberon valley, the freshest air filling our lungs. We rounded the corner and saw three olive trees against a dry-stone fence, a beautiful - if a bit unkempt - garden with a few wild tulips, parsley clumps and some iris, two fig trees, one of which was bending under the weight ripe figs. We picked a couple straight off the branch and ate them. But the more an enormous and breath-taking Linden tree.

That night we drove on to Aix-en-Provence and over dinner we decided to do one of the least sensible things we’ve ever done. We bought a house.

We love it. It gives us great pleasure and we have already had so many memories: our children running up to the boulangerie to buy croissants for breakfast; long lunches under the tree with friends and afternoon snoozes; walks through the country-side picking fresh thyme and rosemary for the dinner; evening apéros at Le Petit Jardin; pétanque in the square.. The list goes on.

We love sharing it with others.

Email us at autilleulviens@gmail.com