IITT’’ S TTHATT RIVIERA TOUCH
IF YOU can’t head for the Med this year, then have a go at creating your own Riviera at home. The ingredients are fewer than you might think – a summery surface underfoot, pots that look the part, the sound of water, and palm tree lookalikes.
Even small backyards can be transformed. Impress by changing colours and textures where necessary.
Large paving slabs in an irregular pattern suggest a more leisurely life and the view can be varied to conjure that lazy Med mood by removing a few and planting herbs in the spaces, in soil topped with small stones.
Pebbles or pea-gravel evoke a beach, especially if a few rocks can be added.
Bare soil should be covered with a plastic membrane first to suppress weeds. The pebbles can be planted through with ground-hugging herbage.
Thymes are ideal because they tolerate being trodden on occasionally – when they release their spicy scent – and produce appealing pink or purple summer flowers that bees and butterflies love. If your boundaries are walls of red brick, fine. If not, paint them warm orange or red. In either case, fix a trellis or wires in front and clothe the wall with exotic climbers such as jasmine, passion flower and a fig tree pruned into a fan shape.
Containers play a dual role. The materials they are made of and their shapes can add atmosphere to the scene. Then they are a major stage for flowers and foliage. Terracotta could have been invented to give gardens a glow.
A collection of pots mixed with vivid flowers can make an eye-stopping feature. For exotic shape choose Cretan jars, Greek-style urns and
Ali Baba pots, and pots decorated with garlands or grapes.
A small water feature, perhaps combined with statuary, is all that is needed to add the sound of splashing or trickling, perhaps from the mouth of a wall-mounted figure or animal or bubbling up from a sunken pebble pool.
One or two spiky, palm-like plants add essential character. Cordyline australis comes from New Zealand but does a passable impression of a palm, growing quickly as long as the soil is welldrained and reaching 6m-8m (20ft-25ft) after a few years.
Young specimens can be grown in pots for the first two or three years to make them more prominent. The New Zealand flax, phormium, looks similar but remains a shrub – a very effective one in yellow, green or bronze – and the hardy Yucca filamentosa from the US makes a large spiky shrub and produces huge panicles of white, bell-shaped flowers from mid-summer. Hot-coloured annual flowers conjure up the Med – petunias, pelargoniums (often wrongly-called geraniums) and any with a sub-tropical character, like portulacas, brilliant-leaved coleus, or, for perennial displays, the sun-loving daisy flowers of osteospermums or gazanias.