Gardening with Pots

May 042017 0 Responses

Mini Daffs in the mountains

Lucky us – we found some tiny Daffodils still in flower on the top of the hills en route to Manteigas, Portugal – growing at 1450m in practically pure rock.  Growing with them were tiny alpine bluebells.

It just goes to show that when all the books tell you to put grit underneath your bulbs when planting  – it’s because they really like very good drainage and choose to grow right on PURE grit given the chance!  In NZ the best thing to use in your pots or garden would be small, sharp gravel or pumice.

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May 202015 Tagged with 0 Responses

Villa Melzi, Lake Como

We took the passenger ferry over from Varenna (10 mins) to see Villa Melzi despite the threatening rain and were so pleased we did.  The garden is stunning, even on a rainy day.  Wonderful huge, magnificent trees set in broad sweeping lawns with banks of Rhododendron and Azaleas.  Very lush woodland plantings and incredible views over to the other side of the Lake.  There’s quite a wide range of plants here with a lovely gully full of tree ferns, huge plantings of Hosta etc.

Villa Melzi is just a few hundred yards by foot out of the village of Bellagio, so very easy access from the ferry.

The Villa itself is not open.

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May 052015 0 Responses

Fritillarias in Paklenica National Park

Before we left NZ the Mother had been looking up Fritillarias on her IPad and had found that there were 76,000 of them growing in a park just 10 minutes from where the Nephew has just moved to in Oxford.  He was despatched to capture them on film.  Which he obliging did as the lucky blighter only has to walk 40 mins down the tow path of the canal to get there.

That started us wondering if they were to be found in Croatia….  seemingly Mr Wikipedia told us we were MORE likely to see them in Slovenia… Read More…

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