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Autumn is a Second Spring Most Mediterranean gardens are a feast for the eyes from April through the beginning of June. In July and August though most plants enter summer dormancy and you don’t find many flowers or even green…
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Tamarix
Having never met many of them before in real life, Tamarix always seemed rather delicate to me. Turns out they are pretty much indestructible. We have two of them in the garden. One grows with massive roots right out of…
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Ipomoea Batatas – Sweet Potatoes
Pretty (though few) flowers and tasty fruit – Ipomoea batatas or Sweet Potato work well here in this Mediterranean garden. The wild form of Ipomoea batatas is native to Central America. It was imported to Asia by the Spanish and…
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Verbena bonariensis
Another one of those plants that seemed not suited to this area but simply took a year to establish itself. In 2023 I sowed and planted Verbena bonariensis into the then still more or less empty garden. They grew and…
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Mirabilis jalapa
Soil improvement between 2022 and 2024 definitely had a big effect on the inherited, self-seeding Mirabilis jalapa. Whereas in the summer of 2023, despite regular watering, they looked practically dead most of the time, in 2024, with a lot less…
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Cosmos bipinnatus
Some plants just seem to want to give you “the finger”… When I think about how I coddled and cuddled my little cosmos seedlings last spring and summer, padding them with mulch, hovering over them with the watering can – and…