Wednesday, December 10, 2008

My Garden and I

After the lushness of a North Hampshire garden where we had worked very hard to create a pretty traditional cottage garden envied by not a few, we gave it all up and put ourselves into a situation with acres of semi-desert a lot of almond trees, prickly pear, a few scattered olive and carob trees.The bonuses were some fig trees and mediterranean pines. Our intention was to try to live reasonably harmoniously and hoping to be able to provide some kind of cash from a crop. In theory well and good but actually a really daunting project. People used to say "You'll be back - you will miss the green of England". I have to admit there was a point early on when I thought they were right... How do you start where do you start? Then the old joke about the elephant... how do you eat one.... one bite at a time... came to the fore. Terrifying not even to know where to start, what the climate was really going to do during a year. Small little steps close to the house started to make a difference. Loads of failures as we didnt realise that over 700 meters certain things like oranges and lemons generally dont thrive. So one piece of advice is to cultivate a good relationship with the local boss of the nearest garden centre. This part of Spain doesnt have too many of the kind we had left behind in UK.

Using what were already vaguely interesting areas like this old cottage ruin with the delapidated bread oven, I developed a bit of a cottage garden as I would have had in the UK garden. And it worked because it is on the north side and has shade even on the hottest day except in the evening. So here are roses wild irises which grow in this region, marigolds from someone elses garden which just keep on self seeding as long as I keep them tidy. And I put in a lovely white verbena which just gets bigger and bigger each year.

Then I was taken by a friend to see someone's rather lovely garden, a person who had done a degree at the the RHS who had designed it with absence in mind. But in the end it is all about working out a structure. Our first big decision was to put in a natural looking swimming pool which was to be the underpinning of the garden project. This was planned and built to order – it required cutting a swathe through a large area of prickly pear and moving a large volume of earth to level off the hillside. Serious calculations had to be made about how to keep the soil from being washed away from where the man made slope fell away to the south. More than a year later the pool is there and slowly mellowing and blending into the vista before us. We have to share it with all sorts of wildlife of course.... Ever been in a pool where the swallows will take a drink while you are swimming? Or watching bee eaters plonk in for a cooling off while you sit nearby. And the ultimate one day was to watch our neighbourhood fox come up in broad daylight for a drink watched by Steve our cats and dogs.

Many of my plants and bushes in my garden here have to fulfil function and beauty criteria. We paid a local guy to teach us to sort out the existing trees. The almonds had to be pruned the land scraped, and up came the wild flowers in due course. So that was early Spring taken care of. The South side just has to be cactus, succulents, yuccas, agaves and so on because of the extreme heat and lack of shade – all can survive drought but give good structure and shape. The pomegranate tree really looks like it is going to do the business this year. We use large lumps of rocks among the plantings to stabilise the soil and it gives shelter to a myriad of creatures particularly a creature I have become fond of already the natterjacks. On the whole the rabbits have got the message and have moved away from the house and only occasionally try their luck at night. But for a while they were busy munching most of the young plants we put in. Given drought conditions they will risk everything for a bit of greenery. We have now fenced off a small area for some vegetables but more of that anon.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

My Garden and I


Exchange of ideas how to...

At the moment I am experimenting with amaryllis seed that I was given by another English gardener in Murcia. I got some info off the web about how to get this to germinate – and it has! Stage Two commences ... fascinating. I have now got several of my amaryllis seeds germinated and up to one leaf at 2inches (50cms). Now can I have the patience to keep this going for 3 or four years? As I read my way along, my plants will need four leaves before it will flower. Amaryllis seem to flower in open gardens here. And that is what I am aiming for.

Dried corms in pots need to be planted in a sandy based soil and will need some heat from the base in order for it to get going.


December 2008... I have one plant with two leaves.

More on Austria and its gardens

Vienna - It is no accident that there are so many important examples of 18thC Garden Art around Vienna as it again was a sign of conspicuous consumption or a fashion but a very expensive one, as one finds in England and is copied in the United States of America at the key houses of the Presidents like at Mount Vernon. Garden Art was taken up by the Aristoscrats and later by the bourgeoisie to paraphrase an article edited by Michael Conan called "Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550-1850". This sociology of garden art is strong on Vienna and the changing times and shift in wealth particularly dealt with on page 155. Anyway it explains much of the following list of formal and very conservative gardens.


Baden One garden has 20,000 rose trees and the other near the Casino is known as the Spa Garden


Belvedere Schloss


Laxenburg – the gardens can be visited all year round. http://www.schloss-laxenburg.at


Prasak

Das Pflantzenland near Vienna.

A must for anyone developing a garden in this region I think. They have a catalogue online.

http://www.praskac.at


The Palace and Gardens of Schonbrunn near Vienna are a UNESCO World Heritage Site


Tuelln is near the Danube. Die Garten Tuelln, Am Wasspark1. Travel from main railway station Tuelln by bus and back. Time table on line.

Wiedendorf

There is a mediterranean swimming pond here.

http://www.diegaerten.at/en/www.marienschloessl.at

Arche-Noah

Attracts 30,000 visitors a year. May and October are the most active periods in their callendar of events.

This site is in German and English.

Preserving and saving biodiversity by bringing traditional and rare plants back to the market. Seeds and plants available. There is an Organic Visitors Garden.

http://www.arche-noah.at


Grafenegg

"The Gardens of Lower Austria" / "Die Gaerten Niederoesterreichs" St Poelten 5 April 2008 consisted of showing 26 gardens ranging from herbal to imperial gardens. Should still have exhibition gardens.

Killenburger

Adventure gardens ie Farm gardens a Japanese garden, a garden of Fire and Rainbow, a maze, Rose garden. http://www.kittenberger.at

Gardener Starkl

45 hectares of types of trees set out in a country park has a garden planning division.


Mallnitz has an Alpine Botanic Garden

Villach

Here you can find Austria's oldest Nature Reserve - Dobratsch National Park


Friday, November 21, 2008

Ecology and Combatting climate change


Despite my love of growing and watching, tasting and cooking, the weather is now a major factor in the plans of the garden and gardener, My garden and My gardening. What used to grow in one place in England for instance may now fail but will grow further north or mainland European plants are likely to fare well, say, in the south of England. I had already had to change the type of bean I was growing before I left England for this apparently semi arid piece of Spain. Hard to believe
. We need to really get our heads around this and get busy exchanging information and advice. What's working where? How can you improve your garden's chances? So I hope there will be a certain amount of exchange of information and advice on the blog - what tricks does each EU country have to teach the others? Well let's see.... I read this interesting stuff about Madeira gardeners and their propogatting methods. Wait for the next entry





Literary Gardens - Part 1

This is not some scholarly treatise although at times I am looking at some very interesting articles written over time and space. It wont be of any surprise that I have started with my personal favourites and that many are within the area of England I know best. Over time I would like to find new EU literary gardens but I doubt if anyone can argue much with my first selections.

Thomas Hardy

As a Dorset UK kid, Thomas Hardy was part of my real environment through walks around his house and Dorchester in general and my virtual environment through education and study. Over time I have loved him and hated him and his writings. On balance though I have ended up understanding him more and loving him accepting his weaknesses in a way one learns to accept one's own. His love of the country certainly rubbed off on me. I suppose I visited his cottage last more than thirty years ago and have moody photos of the outside taken late on an autumnal day and the noise of crows settling nearby.

He wrote about the cottage where he was born and wrote many of his famous works in a poem called Domicillium when he was 16 in 1860, part of which is below:

"........
It faces west, and round the back and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,
And sweep against the roof, Wild honeysucks
Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish
(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)
To overtop the apple-trees hard by.
Red roses, lilacs, varigated box
Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers
As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these
Are herbs and esculents; and farther still
A field; then cottages with trees, and last
The distant hills and sky.
Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze
Are everything that seems to grow and thrive
Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn
Stands here and there, indeed, and from a pit
An oak uprises, springing from a seed
Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.
........."

Written in his youth maybe I still defy the reader not to be able to visualise that garden of 1860.

For even greater insight the poem goes on about his grandmother's description (it was her husband the first Thomas Hardy who had built the cottage and after whom it is named)

“Fifty years
Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked
The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots
And orchards were uncultivated slopes
O'ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn:
That road a narrow path shut in by ferns,
Which, almost trees, obscured the passer-by.
Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs
And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts
Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats
Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers
Lived on the hills, and were our only friends;
So wild it was when first we settled here.'

So many of his books are peopled by characters he knew in the local landscape. I doubt if there is a book which will not show some aspect of how gardens and landscape were crucial to everyday life and are hard to separate.

Susan Hill

“The Magic Apple Tree” A Country Year Penguin Books. First published 1982. Into many reprints. She records the sights and smells, the people, the gardens animals births, festivals and deaths that mark the changing seasons in the small Oxfordshire community” of Barley. The engravings in the book are by John Lawrence and are in themselves a delight. The cover picture is a painting by Samuel Palmer called “The Magic Apple Tree””

D H Lawrence

It was Lawrence whose power of words to describe nature and gardens which had hit me with the virtual bat. I grew up of course with the scandolous “Lady Chatterley's Lover “ as my only real experience of his writing. I know now that as ever, the background for the book is again drawn for personal sources and loosely drawn from Lady Caroline Morrell's relationship with a young man who came to carve statuary for her garden. My brown papered cover of the book thumbed through and shared with a school friend almost blocked me from his descriptive powers - his detailed description of the miniscule rather than the breadth of the garden and the landscape later astounded me. There are so many examples but my epiphany came in a little anthology whose name has long escaped me. A quick check of some of the names of other poems reinforces this sense for instance "Bavarian Gentians" . But no, I find something different which hints of a memory and it come from an essay written by him called "Twilight in Italy No 4 San Gaudenzio". Passion passion more passion... here is a little snatch:

".....

Meanwhile, the primroses are dawning on the ground, their light is growing stronger, spreading over the banks and under the bushes. Between the olive roots the violets are out, large, white, grave violets, and less serious blue ones. And looking down the bill, among the grey smoke of olive leaves, pink puffs of smoke are rising up. It is the almond and the apricot trees, it is the Spring.

Soon the primroses are strong on the ground. There is a bank of small, frail crocuses shooting the lavender into this spring. And then the tussocks and tussocks of primroses are fully out, there is full morning everywhere on the banks and roadsides and stream-sides, and around the olive roots, a morning of primroses underfoot, with an invisible threading of many violets, and then the lovely blue clusters of hepatica, really like pieces of blue sky showing through a clarity of primrose. The few birds are piping thinly and shyly, the streams sing again, there is a strange flowering shrub full of incense, overturned flowers of crimson and gold, like Bohemian glass. Between the olive roots new grass is coming, day is leaping all clear and coloured from the earth, it is full Spring, full first rapture.

Does it pass away, or does it only lose its pristine quality? It deepens and intensifies, like experience. The days seem to be darker and richer, there is a sense of power in the strong air. On the banks by the lake the orchids are out, many, many pale bee-orchids standing clear from the short grass over the lake. And in the hollows are the grape hyacinths, purple as noon, with the heavy, sensual fragrance of noon. They are many-breasted, and full of milk, and ripe, and sun-darkened, like many-breasted Diana...."

His expression of his love of flowers and nature as expressed in this passage speaks to me more than his novels generally do. So often overlooked.

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Austrian Garden

By fluke the Austrian garden comes early in this blog of European Union gardens not so much because it begins with"A" but because my daughter and her husband have bought a house and farm buildings high in the mountains of the South Tyrol, close to the borders of Italy and Slovenia in a tiny hamlet called Masternitzen close to Pisweg which is near Gurk which is not far from Klagenfurt and after the EuroFootball 2008 a lot of people know where that is!

Their place is at 1000 meters, set on a pine clad mountain side, the meadows stretching away with milking cows dotted around the countryside and lots of very very very green grass.......

While there are ski lifts close by, snow has been conspicuously absent for the last couple of seasons.... So the weather is an uncertain factor in planning the garden. A wander around the land close to the house and despite the fact it is the middle of November I spot hearts ease (), clover, and something like edelweiss. Two rose bushes are still managing to push out blooms. The trees close to the house are all slightly overgrown fruit trees. Very old species – mmm could be interesting....

But the piece de resisitance I think turns out to be what appears on the face of it to be a garden of rubber tyres. Despite my daughter's incredulity I heap praises on on this. Why? Because tyres are ecologically sound garden tools, for mini gardens, potato farms and stabilisers. A little of pushing the weeds around and it is obvious it is full of alpine plants.

It just shows the wisdom in waiting a full year before doing anything irrevocable to a garden you have inherited... one has to forgive the gnome; the tiny but world famous town of Gurk renowned for its cathedral or dom also has a Gnome Park.

On our walk we discover a very substantial manure pile dating from when the barn had milking cows. The fate of this huge fascinating museum of old farming is yet to be decided but it has twelve milking bays amongst its wonderful attractions.

They have decided consequently the vegetable patch will be fairly close to this source of goodness but one of their first tasks will be to create a fence around this chosen area to discourage the garden pests. In my case in Spain this tends to be rabbits but in Masternitzen

the pests come a bit bigger....









this little cowlet has a definite personality and attitude – a bit like Amelie's* gnome – it pops up all over the place and likes having its photo taken.

Sarah and Jens have discovered tree nurseries. This is where you can select your tree while they are still in the earth by type, price, inspection etc and then it is dug up carefully, rootball well protected. Along with this comes free necessary advice for amateurs except they weren't told about staking.

They have bought a number of fruit trees this way to which is attached a funny story -

The nursery owner was insistent they could get at least six in the their pretty small hire car. After a lot of trying out various options the solution selected was to rest the trees on the passenger seat requiring Sarah to lie out flat on the floor of the car with the trees. Unfortunately on the drive back up the mountain they encountered someone with a problem. Having slowed the car, this person glanced down into the car to see Sarah waving back through a mini forest of trees. A new version on the theme of the Green Man....

Staking – to stake or not

Recently it was demonstrated the wisdom of this as the new trees had been blown into an abnormal angle. The new trees are now staked.

Ask.com has a little video about this for information but also there was a little bit on the Gardeners World blog actually referring to a school of thought says that non staking allows young trees to flex in the wind. I think the writer has it about right by going on to say a minimalist stake is about right especially where exposed to the elements.


This is what my friend Gwyn taught us to do i.e. leaving about 12-18 inches above ground. This way the rootball gets a chance to stabilise. Our trees are rock solid one year on, despite their facing difficult winter winds.



More anon about the development of the garden in Austria.

*Reference to that great french film ”Amelie” who pinched her father's gnome and sent it off on a tour of the world. Recently copycatted in UK by someone.

*****

Another noticeable characteristic driving through the valley toward Klagenfurt were the number of garden centres and plant nurseries, one in particular was one of the best I have been in for many a year. (This area of Spain is only just coming in to the world of garden centres as well). There was a fabulous european mediterranean display of plants and trees with a strong italian influence in terms of statuary and marble trees and plants. Not surprising really given the proximity. Some exploration of the internet I came across a recent remark by an Austrian garden designer Petra Gmainer that the culture of gardening is only just happening in Austria rather interesting.

This year there has been a substantial garden show in Lower Austria. at Tulln near the Danube and south of Vienna, situated on 120 acres of natural parkland - the first lower Austrian Garden Show which ran from April to October this year. Have a look at this for more information about trade shows and exhibition gardens. http://www.diegartentulln.at

There were two internationational gardens of note – the English Garden and the Portuguese Garden . Excellent examples to encourage an interest in the the Garden. Also a big interest in the ecology of gardening an area close to my own heart.

*****

Austria has of course a long tradition of stunning formal gardens usually connected to palaces and stately homes. For instance near Vienna there is the Schoennbrunn Park (500 acres of parkland behind the palace) filled with statues, fountains and a famous Gloriette. Vienna also has the Stadtpark, a wonderful place to stroll and inevitably take coffee and kuecken.

There are many other beautiful areas – the custom of the wanderweg being a favoured way to experience nature but I think with many other sociological changes taking place in Europe the role of the garden and the gardener is under change. This will bring me back to my own backyard in the mountains behind the costas.




Sunday, November 16, 2008

Famous Gardening Books of the World


I have included a couple of references to languages other than english. This is particularly where it would be great if other people could let me know of some exceptional books. This is where I expect my friend Graham to weigh in or give me a wigging. These are ones which have excited me just reading about them:

Historical
ADAMS, William Howard; The French Garden 1500-1800. London, Scolar Press, [1979],
“A well-illustrated and important work showing the development of the French Garden from early Italian influences to attain a dominating position in European culture. Very well-illustrated. The author was with the National Gallery of Art in Washington. “
MAWE, Thomas, and John Abercrombie; Every Man his Own Gardener; The Compete Gardener, being a Gardener's Calendar or work to be done in the Kitchen, Fruit, Flower, Forcing Garden, &c. for Every Month in the Year...Directions for the Propagation, culture of Various Plants, Flowers, Shrubs,. London, J. F. and C. Rivington, T. Longman, B. Law, et al, 1787, eleventh edition, corrected and greatly enlarged.
This is a description from a specialist bookseller's list:
The preface of the edition of 1787 and also the preface to most later editions is signed by the
real author or only author of the book, John Abercrombie'. Includes all aspects of gardening in considerable detail, with extensive lists of plants arranged in categories (annuals, kitchen garden, hot house, flowering plants, fruit trees, etc.) It was the standard reference of the time. "Among eighteenth-century British nurserymen who became writers on p ractical gardening one of the most successful was John Abercrombie." (Henrey) It was first published in 1767 in about half the size of this edition. Mawe, a gardener to the Duke of Leeds, did not contribute, but his name was added because of his f ame at the time. This was an important gardening handbook of the time covering all aspects including greenhouse, hot-house, fruit growing, flowers, kitchen garden, etc. This edition has the added chapter Systematic Catalogue of Hot-House Plants, not in earlier editions. The work lists thousands of species of trees, plants, flowers by type.

What I dont know is whether the following book is by the same writer: -
ANON,
Every Man His Own Gardener; an Account of Every Vegetable Production Cultivated for the Table by the Plough and the Spade. New York, Homans & Ellis, 1845. This is an American book. This is a book I would like to see but maybe only one or two copies around. Will have to ask some of my professional gardeners about this one.

MUENSCHER, Walter Conrad, Myron Arthur Rice; Garden Spice and Wild Pot-Herbs. Ithica, New York, Comstock Publishing Associates, 1955
Accurate botanical information about wild and cultivated herbs combined with excellent illustrations by Abbe, artist and scientific illustrator. Included in the descriptions are scientific names as well as French, German and Italian names, and much useful information to help grow, harvest and recognize wild herbs, good information on seed germination, hardiness, medicinal properties, cookery, etc.


Modern Most useful two books I have on growing and planning here in Spain are : Gardening in Spain by Marcelle Pitt. My edition's 1991 but it was first published by Mirador Books in 1988 .... and I know it has been revised since then. If you can pick up a second hand copy you will save lots of dosh. Why this book hasnt come out in Spanish defeats me. Gardening the Mediterranean Way – Practical Solutions to Summer Dry Climates Heidi Gildemeister Thames and Hudson She has also written Mediterranean Gardening: A Waterwise Approach (1995)

While I was nosing around Amazon though I discovered a couple of interesting other titles.
Heidi Gildemeister, que tratará sobre la planta mediterrá ... Heidi Gildemeister. Plantas: cómo trabajar con la vegetación ...
http://www.cecot.es/comunicat/jardiners/...

la darrera versió dels programes informàtics més usuals fins ... Heidi Gildemeister, El Jardín Mediterrani. Com podem crear un paradís verd amb poca aigua. ...


I hope this blog will let me keep adding to the list over posts.....

The Art of Gardens

Monet's gardens at Giverney north west of Paris, France has millions of visitors every year from every corner of the world. I know - I saw them! Put on a show of his artwork anywhere and people will flock to see it. The image of his waterlilies can be found everywhere. Fewer people make it ever to see the startling originals at the Orangerie in Paris - a mistake believe me. On a much smaller scale are the Stannards - a whole family of artists who painted19th century watercolours of gardens and rural landscapel #Harry Lilian Emily for starters. I have a small study of dog roses by Lilian seen here which would have been used for a bigger painting.

I vaguely rememrber seeing a picture of a walled garden with a group of roses such as these painted by her. She lived in London, Emily painted in the Bedfordshire area. But Henry (Harry) is the most famous.. Consider then the art of ceramics. Portmerion for example, Royal Worcester, Meissen and other European copyists. The flower is represented over and over again. In the case of Susan Ellis 's work for Portmerion one even learns the latin names. Not called the Botanic Garden for nothing.


Over the years I have collected a few other interesting
images of the
garden
.Here is another of my favourites. I still havent identified the initials - who cares? I love it and sets the tone for this blog.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Intro

I once read a book called The 3000 mile Garden” This was about a long distance friendship between two people and described in detail how their gardens were changing by season by year and so on। There was a romantic bit of me that thought I could base my newly found fraternal relationship on something very similar as we both seemed to like gardens but we were coming at it from very different perspectives. All the same I can see that gardens and gardening is a form of communication that transcends borders and I seem to have an enormous amount of friends who are gardeners because they love being in the garden, the physical activity of gardening or because they wish to create a personal space which is colourful, mood altering , peaceful. Funky, an extension to the home. The northern Europeans have been at it for a very long time and so for that matter have the Moors which I have discussed in other places...... I also seem to have a number of friends who are involved professionally in some aspect of gardens and gardening from a whole plethora of perspectives. I also note how much money is now spent on gardens per individual family.



Vistas from Afar