Getting a Med start
Holiday inspired you to grow Mediterranean plants at home? These are the best ones to try
WHEN enjoying a good local drink on holiday, we are often tempted to buy a bottle or two to bring home to keep that holiday feeling going.
However, it usually doesn’t travel well and becomes a naff, sticky sweet syrup that ends up down the drain.
The same temptation can also arise when we see beautiful plants growing abroad that we’re then inspired to recreate at home.
I’m writing this while on holiday in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy. We’re staying in a traditional cone-shaped house, a trulli, and are surrounded by fields of olive trees.
In cooler parts of the day and evening we venture into town and see familiar plants everywhere.
Some, like the colourful oleander look wonderful here, lining streets and motorways with their white and pink blossoms. But in most of Britain you don’t get the really vibrant displays of colour which indicates that they are much happier elsewhere.
Others are perfectly happy in Blighty. So for the look and occasional taste of the Med at home, here are the plants that do travel. While they love baking in the Mediterranean sun, some will thrive
in our colder, damper atmosphere. In fact, many of them do so well in our islands we regard them as British garden staples.
Rosemary is beautiful, useful and very versatile. You can get tiny ones that act as ground cover or ones with upright sprigs which stand to attention and provide great seasoning for autumnal dishes.
Olive trees will do well in our gardens. Yes, they are happier when being baked by the sun but it is possible to buy topiary versions trained into lollipop shapes to stand sentry on either side of a doorway.
A lovely olive on a sunny patio in a terracotta pot takes some beating. It won’t produce the fruit of the Mediterranean varieties but it will help to create the ambience. Good drainage is essential.
In parts of the UK, plumbago will thrive. This is a real treat and a pure delight – the lightest blue flowers in almost cloud-like profusions balanced at the end of delicate sprigs.
Geraniums are a classic holiday plant too. We can’t bring home bougainvillea with its cerise bracts that delight when planted against whitewashed walls, but we can grow its mate, the geranium – more correctly called pelargoniums – which come in a wide range of red, white, pinks and purples. They’re so easy to propagate but do look after them through the winter by bringing them into a porch for added shelter.
I had a lovely mozzarella, basil and tomato salad last night. The lime green leaves of the basil growing in a pot in the door of the restaurant in a town square was like a mirror image of the one I grow at home from seed. You need to start from scratch every year as it won’t survive our winters.
Trachelospermum jasminoides is an evergreen climber with glossy dark green leaves and jasmine-like white flowers with an intoxicating scent.
For best flowering, grow in the sun in a sheltered spot but it will tolerate some shade as well. It can also be grown to great effect in a conservatory.
Thanks to our changing climate, vineyards are sprouting up not only in Kent but moving northwards through England. Vitis vinifera – the common grape vine – is a thirsty and deep-rooted plant, so not really suitable for pots or containers.
There’s quite a lot of work attached to producing good plump sweet fruit as the grapes have to be thinned, but the reward for growing your own outdoors in sunnier positions or leading the stem inside to a greenhouse is a plentiful luscious crop.
Finally, I’ve yet to get any edible fruit from my fig tree (Ficus carica) but it’s still a relatively young specimen and I love the foliage. The fig tree is one of the first plants cultivated by humans – fossils dating to 9000BC have been found in the Jordan Valley. The ‘Brown Turkey’ variety is the best cultivar for these islands.