The Journal of a Gardener in Tuscany part1

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The Journal of a Gardener in Tuscany - May 2004 Part 1

Author: Rupert Mayhew

May 13th 2004

With less than a month to go before our first wedding we are
making sure every job that needs doing will be done in time. A
month can go quickly in gardening, especially with all the other
work to do.

I have arranged for a helicopter to come and take photos of La
Doccia on the morning of the first wedding when the house and
garden should be looking its finest. This means no strimming on
the slopes around the house; though they may harbour snakes
being bitten by an adder is a small price to pay to have green
looking slopes on all the photos. Usually the helicopter takes
pictures in July when the grass is brown, but here we will have
soft lush lawns and slopes full of wildflowers.

Naturally the day after the helicopter comes we’ll all be out
strimming furiously to make the place safe once more. The slopes
will turn brown, die back and look awful, but the postcards
we’ll make from our photos will show an immaculate green corner
of Tuscany for ever, and will sell the place better.

Now the lawnmower is back the lawn is beginning to shape up. It
became too painful to watch as the missing spare part for the
lawnmower never seemed to come from Milan to our Mechanic. The
lawn grew and grew, soon it became a meadow, then a prairie and
by the time the lawnmower came back the lawn was anything but a
lawn. As I parked my car and scampered down to the office on
Monday morning, all excited at the prospect of taming the lawn,
I was horrified to see Antonio strimming, yes strimming, his way
through the heart of the beautiful lawn. I managed, just, not to
hyperventilate before I stopped him and pointed desperately to
some olive trees to prune, which he obediently did, and I was
left with half a lawn overgrown, to 12’’ height, and the other
half strimmed to the ground.

This is a tricky one, a two toned lawn, and after mowing it
twice in 4 days it still looks intriguing. Luckily the cool damp
weather, which usually ends at the end of April, has continued
and the lawn continues to grow without the relentless sun
beating back growth. I top dressed and fertilised the lawn with
a sandy mix high in Nitrogen. I know one should top dress in the
autumn but better late than never. Top dressing with sand helps
the lawn to level itself out, over a period of time, and give it
a flat look. Most people in England buy a house and inherit a
lawn that may be been worked on for a century or more, every
week, without a break, except perhaps the odd war. Not here in
the mountains though, I suspect that less than twenty years ago
this lawn was ploughed, farmed and harvested to produce
something more useful than the grass cuttings I manage to make.

The roses look set to produce all the confetti our wedding
guests will need. But the weather has been so bad that we moved
the lemon tree onto the terrace and moved a number of plants
back under cover. Last Friday we had over an inch of hail fall
here while it snowed at nearby Consuma, the Hostas in particular
were not happy at the hail. This is weather that is simply
unheard of in Tuscany. Elsewhere I have started to identify some
of the orchids growing here, we have Orchis Tridentata and
Orchis Purpurea in abundance, but the smallest of the orchids
here is the most intriguing. It seems to have three different
types of flowers growing on the one stem. I expect it is
extremely rare, probably unique to this valley in fact, so much
so that I am tempted to ‘discover’ it, and name it after myself…

May 4th 2004

We are almost adopting a laid back attitude to the garden this
week, so much is growing and flowering it is hard enough just to
take in what is happening let alone doing more work, so sitting
back and watching what is happening and enjoying it too is
definitely a sensible course of action.

The roses are shooting up and looking very promising, these
occupy the main flowerbeds and we have a number of large
climbing roses growing up walls and covering the Lavenderia.
These were planted three years ago, last year they were fully
settled and this year they are all very leafy with lots of
flower buds waiting to open over the summer. The herbaceous
border, built last year, is also a riot of colour and looking
very healthy, the tulips are in full flow and, to make a mess of
out the terraces, the walnut trees around the house are
flowering and shedding thick conical catkins all over the
terraces and staircases.

We have not had to water the garden or even the pots once, a
rarity by this time in the year, and we have had steady showers,
along with sun, all week long. Ideal for the garden but a pity
for people visiting La Doccia and hoping for some fair weather.
They seem to be enjoying the food and wine though and so I am
thinking of growing a few vines here soon to make a little wine,
and if that is no good, some grapes for them to eat.

The lemon tree looks resplendent, with about 12 lemons growing
and a number more on the way. An olive tree will fit the pot we
planned to put the lemon in though. It is too late to replant a
lemon tree and so we will wait until September before doing
anything. This means we are stuck with a bounteous flowering
lemon tree crammed into an ugly black plastic container, with
handles, straight from the garden centre. The short term plan is
to buy an even larger terracotta pot and put the tree and the
pot, all together, into it and put the young olive tree into the
smaller pot ready originally the lemon. Both will look good in
the car park alongside the geraniums already flowering.

The lawn is now about 8 inches high and is unlikely to be cut
until the weekend, when the machine is back and, conveniently,
when I am in London. In the 18 days since the lawn was last
mowed the lawn has grown, in some parts, over 12 inches, and
following a day of incessant rain today, these perfect grass
growing conditions continue. All I need now is a herd of sheep
to move around the farm and wolf up the thick green grass
everywhere.

Talking of walking the land, the olive groves are thick with
flowers, Star of Jerusalem (Ornithogalum Umbellatum), White
Campion (Silene Alba), Sun Spurge (Euphorbia Helioscopia), all
abound and are some I have identified. But none impress, or
stand out so distinctly, as the orchids in the olive grove by
the Traversaia stream. These are not mere meadow flowers, but
instead stand upright and regal, as if the olive trees are there
simply to complement their beauty. There are a number of
different orchids here, and I am still identifying them, but of
all the flowers that grow here, these are the most striking, and
unlike the flowers above, seem too well crafted be meadow
flowers.

These are just a fraction of what there is, everyday I take new
photos of unfamiliar flowers in their natural environment.
Luckily there are no stinging nettles like there are in England.
When a child I was told Roman soldiers bought stinging nettle
seeds over to England in their boots, if that is the case, they
brought all their seeds over with them and left none in this
part of Tuscany.

About the author:
Rupert Mayhew recently moved to Tuscany, Italy, from a career in
IT in London. He works in and runs an expanding agriturismo and
this new role includes the task of creating a garden out of what
is now mountainside. http://www.ladocciawelcomes .com.
rmayhew@ladocciawelcomes.com