Absentee gardening in Spain By Clodagh and Dick Handscombe, Authors of ‘Your Garden in Spain’.
June is here and those who live in the UK for the winter months are now arriving back for the summer months and a combination of enjoying a relaxing holiday and progressing the next stage of the garden.
How complex you make the garden will depend on whether you are only using the house for personal holidays, let for some months of the year or are preparing the house for sale.
Whichever situation you are in there are a number of things to recognise.
1. Simple gardens need less maintenance and can avoid the need to employ a gardener.
2. There are plenty of drought resistant plants that will require little or no watering after the first two summers once their tap roots are down. Glance through the illustrated descriptions of the 400 plants included in Part Four of ‘Your Garden in Spain’ and you will soon find things that take your fancy.
3. Containers and window boxes can be inexpensively planted up with colourful annuals the day you arrive for the summer and removed when you leave. Empty pots will look more tidy during your absence.
4. If you only have a terrace and only come out to Spain for the summer months or are in a frosty area treat subtropical plants such as bougainvilleas and hibiscus as annuals. They won’t cost much to replace each year and will create a tropical looking summer garden during your summer visit.
5. Natural shade under trees is more relaxing than under an umbrella especially if you can tie a hammock between two trees. So don’t chop down all the trees just because they drop leaves or fruit.
6. Maximise the areas covered by paths, terraces and areas of stone chippings laid over black plastic. A lawn is a chore for absentee gardeners.
7. Build a rockery to hide all builders rubble. Plant with drought and frost resisting irises, herbs and succulents and it will soon be colourful and largely look after itself.
8. Phase the development of the garden over a number of years. Chapter 1.5 ‘Special challenges facing the absentee gardener’ in ‘Your Garden in Spain’ includes lists of important ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’ts’.
9. If you are out for three months or more it makes sense to grow a few tomato and pepper plants in containers so that you can enjoy them fully sun ripened and chemical free. Just dust them each week with pure yellow sulphur powder. This is more ecological and safer than copper sulphate powder. There is an entire section dedicated to the growing of vegetables in areas as small as one square metre in our vegetable book ‘ Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’.
10. Give the garden a deep soaking the day before you leave and most drought resisting plants will be happy until the autumn rains.
If you have made substantial plantings fit up an irrigation system with a battery operated timer. But remember to fit a new battery the day before you leave!
Whatever you do enjoy your Spanish garden to the full and don’t be too ambitious. Photographs in our book from our early absentee gardener days are very different to later ones when we had become well established full time residents.
'Details of Clodagh and Dick's most recent books will be found on
www.gardeninginspain.com together with some of their later writings.
If you have any questions arising out of their latest article send them to
yourgardeninspain@hotmail.com © Clodagh and Dick HandscombeJune 09 .
