I promised in my earlier post about gardening to give you some more information about what kind of plants you can expect to find in the Lanzarote garden centres. Here are a few of my favourites with photos from our garden……
This is the Callistemon Viminalis which actually means ‘plant with beautiful stamens’ and it really is! I call it the Bottle Bush Tree, it will grow 5-6 metres high if you let it or you can keep it pruned back. The stamens are part of the growth, the tree produces the flowers and then leaves alternately along each of its branches, so it flowers a few times a year. There are two kinds that I’ve seen in Lanzarote, the other has softer leaves and weeps downwards.
I refer to this plant as the Bumble Bee Tree but its only my nick name for it, the proper name is Cassia Didymobotrya, I was really pleased to find a few of them in the Arrecife garden centre recently, as I have been waiting to find one for the garden. It is an evergreen shrub reaching up to 3m in height, the flowers are stunning and all year round and it produces pods with seeds for propagation.
Roses will grow here and you can find them to buy in the local garden centres, they do need lots of watering though!
There are different colours of daisy / margarita plants available, don’t worry about buying a small pot, it will easily grow to fill a space and provide lots of long lasting colour. I regularly cut them back as they can get woody underneath and they soon sprout back and bud up again.
This is a mastic tree (pistacia lentiscus) , it grows to about 4m in height, the leaves are small and evergreen, the tree provides a good shade and the best part is that it produces these lovely red berries in December which adds a Christmas feel to the garden. I’ve not know the locals to harvest the resin as in other countries but the write up in the Canary Island Flora does say that the resin was heated up with white wine and water to combat tuberculosis. It also mentions that it is protected under regional legislation (Annexe II of the Flora Order). There is a larger version Pistacia Atlantica that grows to 10m that is also a protected species. You can read the earlier article on gardening in Lanzarote and details of the garden centres here |
|||
|
|
Great Photos
Those are great photos! I'm going to do something on my low maintenance Cactus garden now - you've inspired me!
The Photos are amazing
These are amazing photos. I always thought I'd have to give up gardening when we move to Lanzo. Please write more about what you can grow. Do you need to do an awful lot of watering? I'm amazed that roses will grow there.
Watering
Hi Mike (Another one)
Thanks for your comment, happy to post more information on gardening if people want to read about it! I've found with watering that the more you water the more the plants flourish, they can survive on less but you really can see the difference when you water either first or last thing (in the day the sun will scorch the leaves)a couple of times a week. You can grow all sorts - some of the normal summer bedding plants such as pansies, petunias, snap dragons flower all year round and self seed. I've just had daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinths flowering, the bulbs were brought over from the UK and I put them in pots but they are going in the flowerbeds for next year. Don't worry you really can get your gardening fix here, to me there's nothing better than pottering about the garden in the evenings and weekends - its really relaxing.
Why don't you tell me what you would like to grow and I can tell you if I've seen them here? Look out for more of my gardening info coming soon!
plant I came across in Lanzarote
This might be an immpossible question,I was in lanzarote this year and saw an orange flowered bushy plant,it had the most wonderful fragarence,and stood about60cm tall and about the same in width,could you possibly identify it,could it be grown in england and if so is it available here. many thanks Terry
Orange Flowers
We don't have many orange flowered plants and I'm struggling to think of one that has a fragrance. We have a shub called Bignonia which can have orange bell shaped flowers, its also available in pink and yellow. The bird of paradise is orange and hibiscus has multi colours including orange / peach flowers.
There is a website that has lots of our local flowers listed with photos http://www.floradecanarias.com/lanzarote.html if this helps.