Colourful Easter gardens as Spring brings its bounty

MARCH started traditionally, by roaring in like a lion with gales, rain and tons of Sahara dust. Let’s hope that it leaves like a lamb with calm sunny days during Easter week and the Easter weekend.

Many expats are already looking forward to eating out in the garden, enjoying sunbathes and siestas in the garden, and for some for the first use of the swimming pool this year.

Many gardens are already very colourful with spring flowering perennials shrubs and trees and no doubt some will add a few early annuals for extra Easter colour.

Over wintered real food, healthy ecological home grown vegetables such as broccoli, broad beans, peas, salad leaves, radishes, carrots, onions and leeks etc are now ready to harvest.

On the fruit front, avocadoes, oranges, mandarins, lemons, and grapefruits can be harvested from many gardens, plus strawberries from a bed or barrel. What a joy it is to live in Spain!

Easter is also a good time to plant up new perennials, shrubs and trees. Your choices being determined by the style of your garden and how dry your garden becomes in the summer, and how cold during the winter.

If you are not sure what plants are most suitable for your situation glance through the easy to read plant lists and descriptions in our book ‘Your Garden in Spain – From planning to planting and maintenance’. To help you find or ask for plants in the garden centre botanical Spanish and English names are given. Additionally an English – Spanish vocabulary covering plant materials, tools, parts of plants, verbs etc are included at the back of the book as well as a page of useful addresses.

And of course one should not forget that now is a good time to start to plant up or grow from seed a wide variety of vegetables.

If you haven’t the space or energy for a large vegetable plot an amazing quantity of healthy food can b e grown in raised beds and in containers.

The large size black builders’ buckets are particularly handy, as are growing tables. Each are illustrated with photographs of our experimental set ups.

To know more about growing vegetables on a small scale refer to ‘Growing healthy vegetables in Spain’ or ‘Apartment gardening Mediterranean style’. By the way there were 21 vegetables grown on the three square metre terrace.

Fortunately such things can be fitted into all gardens and many fruit trees can also be planted in containers.

Stop press: Dick will be doing a book signing at the Quick Save store on the N332 going north near Pedreguer on Friday, April 5 from 11am until 3pm.

All his books will be available including the latest ones ‘ Your personal guide to Having a Great Retirement’ and ‘ Your personal guide to making Authentic Valencian Paellas’. At the same time you can pick up your copy of EWN.