Gardening in Andalucia

Gardening in Spain

It has been hard to create a garden around Casa Campestre, in soil that is made of claggy clay, riddled with stones, and as dry as a bone most of the time.  And we are seeing real signs of climate change, with torrential rainstorms that wash away plants, trees, and even rocks.  And that type of heavy rain simply washes away and doesn’t seep into the soil – what we need in Spain is that steady drizzle that we sometimes get in the UK.

Now I’m not much of a gardener, it is my husband Hilary who tirelessly plants, waters, feeds, weeds and protects our garden against rabbits, which has proved to be an almost full-time occupation.  Last year was immensely dry, and so there was nothing left for the poor rabbits to eat, apart from all those succulent green shoots that Hilary had planted in our garden.  What happened was simple: planted one day, eaten the next.   They also managed to chew through our dripping irrigation system that we had carefully positioned around the garden.  So it was clear that we needed rabbit protection – fast!  We tried chicken wire, but – obviously – rabbits can dig underneath. Our latest invention is to surround all our new plants with giant plastic water bottles, and this seems to work, though our garden is increasingly looking like a moon landscape, rather than the lush Mediterranean garden we had envisaged.

UK plants to Spain

Trying to introduce English plants to Spanish gardens is a challenge too.  You need really special varieties of cacti and succulents that can withstand temperature extremes.  However, there is no harm in trying, though with varying degrees of success.  Last time we drove to Spain, we carried 153 plants in our car (not a big car!).  Thankfully enough space for my toothbrush and a few t-shirts.  The cyclamen, vincas, hellebore, irises, cotinus, buddleia and red hot poker have done famously, while the alchemilla mollis, aquilegia and some ferns, really didn’t do so well. We will keep trying – maybe hostas, peonies, anenome japonica and montbretia might work ….   

The next gardening project has been to grow oleanders from seed taken from our beautiful Spanish oleander bushes.  We took the seeds back to the UK, and – unusually – they all sprouted.  And – unusually – they are all surviving.  And so when we are driving to Spain in September, we might be carrying 250 oleander plants, and hope that our Andalucian neighbours will want some of them!  Not sure if we will manage to squeeze in any other luggage into the car. 

As you can imagine, the allocation of boot space for plants is the source of many good-natured – and sometimes not so good-natured – discussions in our house, as the moving date comes ever nearer …  I will post a photograph of the car when we leave the UK, which will show the final plant vs non-plant allocation, let’s hope it’s a fair balance!