Tough task – turn an acre of Abruzzo mud into an acre of Abruzzo garden. And forget all you know about English gardening and learn about Mediterranean gardening instead.

The stunningly scenic acre of gently-sloping, south-facing land bordered by olive groves that we bought in Abruzzo after moving permanently from England a year ago is coming along a treat. Soon, it'll provide our new home; your three Abruzzo holiday villas; and a swimming pool. Now we just have to transform an Abruzzo building site into an Abruzzo garden…

Luckily, we don't have to do much in the way of ground clearance. Not that there was much to do in the first place as our acre was a tree-free vegetable garden. Stretching away into the distance are beautifully-tended olive groves. (From which - incidentally - comes the oil we provide in your villas).

But how do we transform the rubble-strewn mudslick leading down to the olive groves into a Mediterranean garden blending seamlessly into the scenery ?

We'll be starting the hard landscaping later this week - putting in the foundations for the swimming pool down by the olives and then terracing our way up the slope.  That's all pretty straightforward and can be done reasonably quickly, but the real work on the garden starts with the planting plan.

I'm going to have to unlearn everything I know about gardening in England. Fuelled by optimism, we crammed as many plants and cuttings as we could from our old garden in south-west England into the removal van and brought them with us.

All except a couple have survived the year - but only thanks to constant care and gallons of water. The kind of attention we simply won't be able to provide on a large scale next year. Some will be OK. Many, nurtured by the damp, shady softness of an English garden and unsuited to the harsh glare of a Mediterranean garden, will not.

Afraid of what won't survive, I'm on a crash course trying to discover what will. The Royal Horticultural Society in England provide a useful 'Mediterranean Climate Plants' list; and I've been reading and making endless notes through 'Mediterranean Gardening - A Waterwise Approach' by Heidi Gildemeister; and Graham Payne's 'Garden Plants for Mediterranean Climates'.

I can sum-up their approach to Mediterranean gardening in a sentence: Plan carefully; buy wisely; mulch deeply. But their plant recommendations - and the RHS's - are irritatingly and bewilderingly different. Not that many plants appear on all three lists - so what are you supposed to make of a plant endorsed by one - but not the others ? Our Abruzzo garden will be hot in Summer with some snow and frost in Winter. Painstaking choices to match these criteria lie ahead.

ps…
How's the build going ? Really good thanks. Vito and the boys are currently putting the big, traditional coppi tiles on the roof. Then the plastering and painting of the outside starts.

You can plan to take your Villasfor2 holiday - and be one of the first to enjoy our new Abruzzo garden - anytime after 2 May, 2009. You'll be able to book your Abruzzo holiday villa - with big introductory discounts - from early January. More soon…

Abruzzo garden, Abruzzo holiday villa, Mediterranean garden, Mediterranean gardening

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 3:41 am and is filed under About Villas for 2, Property, Daily Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.