GARDENING IN CATALUNYA

A question often asked by gardeners coming to Catalunya, is which plants and flowers are best suited to growing here with a limited water supply ?

SEVEN YEARS AGO in May 2003, we bought our lovely little finca near Camarles. Our first trip out in September of that year was spent working on the casita and getting used to the sunshine after a very wet Irish summer. We are both keen gardeners so our next job was definitely to organise a garden.

I was very excited about all the beautiful shrubs, trees and plants I planned to have in my garden. We set forth the following September to our local garden centre to make our purchases. Our next job was to make four raised beds which looked rather well, I thought, surrounded by large rocks, rolled or picked from our land.

Flower beds were duly planted up and we were thrilled with the results of our hard labour. However, when we arrived at our finca the following August, we were sorely disappointed to find a lot of our shrubs were dead due to the fact, no doubt, that they had had no water during the very hot weather. I think I had been hoping for a miracle!

Before I retired I owned a seaside garden centre and I always gave clients this advice about what to grow by the sea.

“Look around the local gardens and see what is growing well.”

This advice I now tried to apply to my garden in Spain where it is hot and dry for most of the summer months. As we are never here in July or August, I needed plants which would survive these conditions. I already had some geraniums and cacti which were doing well.

I THEN PLANTED MORE geraniums, particularly the ivy leafed trailing variety, which does exceptionally well here, lots of different cacti, succulents and aloes, which store water in their leaves. Also, yuccas and mesembryanthemums (a succulent which trails over walls, etc, with a vivid coloured flower).

I have had great success also with lavender, which loves dry hot conditions. The important thing with lavender is to cut back all the flower spikes after flowering, as this ensures a nice bushy plant. Another good investment is the purple leaved tradascantia (only grows indoors at home).

This grows very easily from a cutting as does a geranium and succulent. Have a look around a friend´s garden – maybe, you could swap cuttings. In these recessionary times, this is a good way to increase your plants.

ALSO, WHEN YOU are out walking, have a good look around and see what grows wild. On my walks, I have seen, scabiosa, which is very pretty, sedum, rosemary, viburnum, tinus (grows into a large bush with a pink/white flower), alliums and of course, palms. All these will grow in your garden with only water from the heavens, so need very little looking after.

When we arrived here in early June, it was a joy to see the riot of colour as we turned into our casita.

Mind you, the weeds have grown even better than the geraniums this year!!

ROSALEEN DOWLINGDIP. HORT(CITY & GUILDS)

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Posted by editor on 2010-06-29 Filed under Home & Garden, July 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry