Gardening... tell it to the birds

There are things I can do and things I cannot. One is enjoying the beauty of a garden, the other is managing to create one. In the world of dedicated ‘Green Fingers’ horticulturists I rate few marks and these are purely for effort and perseverance rather than results.

When I first decided to try my hand at gardening in Spain, I quickly realised that concrete and loose gravel and rocks would be far more effective than fertilizer if I had any chance of keeping frustration at bay so I opted for a locally quarried gravel topping with occasional splashes of greenery.

Not much different really to trying to cultivate something in a neglected allotment in England where my wartime ‘Homeguard’ dad only managed to score with nettles, dandelions, comfrey and whatever was found in a packet of Pannet & Naeden seeds from the local corner shop cum ironmongers. So ‘Digging for Victory’ was beyond our efforts. When we tried to grow vegetables, like potatoes, carrots or radishes the horrendous stringy, lumpy and mis-shaped roots were usually unidentifiable. Weeds grew well but sod all else. Why I thought that in Spain I might develop ‘Green Fingers’ was a loony idea and at the bottom of the ‘mind boggles league’ so I craftily decided to try my hand at nurturing weeds and ‘wild things.’

Obviously I could not cultivate weeds from seeds but with a degree of low cunning I decided to base my Spanish garden around rugged plants of the wild sort which had a survival instinct. The kind which needed no attention and seemed to thrive just for the hell of it and didn’t even have to be watered. I began by nicking straggly twiglets ad lib. One of my neighbours had a wondrous display of blooming Belladonna so I gently persuaded it to climb over my fence. I nicked some wild honeysuckle roots from a campo rubbish heap and unearthed a few bits of ivy from a dieing hedgerow. I did have a touch of success with a handful of whispy Jacaranda shoots but that’s another story and one which emanated from rotting seeds being scattered into a window box.

I digress. In the horticultural league I was still a loser. A dozen sturdy tomato plant shoots yielded me only one tiny fruit. A little lemon bush flowered but the fruits were mis-shaped and unrecognisable.

My ‘rock garden’ triumphs were cactus crowned ones. Prickly plates I harvested out on the campo did have faith in me. The cacti I’d salvaged from rubbish tips came up fighting and even produced lovely buttercup yellow flowers and red prickly pears.

All, I must admit, without my careless assistance.

Despite being horticulturally impotent, I still enjoy my garden but now it’s at window box level but the colours are just as vivid and mostly perennial. I like the fact that the rosemary mingles with the electrically purple and mauve succulents and violet South African daisies. Additionally my balcony terrace is framed by a mélange of lush arboreal colour too for most of the year so despite my lack of green fingers I can still commune with nature and observe what may be considered to be a wild bird sanctuary. The number of different kind of birds which honour me with a ‘fly past’ is huge. Sparrows sand bathe, doves and wood pigeons nest, swallows, swifts, tits, thrushes, hawks, terns, seagulls the lot!

Amongst the blossoming Iberian trees nest many avian species.

I reckon I might switch from horticulture to ornithology, it must be easier than gardening and let’s face it, I’ve always enjoyed a degree of bird watching.