A Mediterranean garden in the Languedoc

We would like to introduce our blog readers to a new blog about garden and horticulture in a Mediterranean climate. The blogger in this instance is chaiselonge who has written  this guest blog by way of introduction.

A Mediterranean garden in the Languedoc

I grew up in Mediterranean countries, in North Africa and in Turkey, among olive trees, eucalyptus, oleanders and hillsides covered in thyme and rosemary.  After spending many years in Wales I persuaded Lo Jardinièr (the gardener, in Occitan) that I need to live where olive trees grow.  So now we're learning to garden in a Mediterranean climate and we've planted two small olive trees which will probably look lovely in 100 years' time.  Last autumn we harvested 24 black olives.  I followed the recipe for preserving them given by Tomás Graves in his book, A Home in Majorca, soaked them in spring water for a few days, then layered them with herbs in an earthenware jar and covered them with brine.  Two months later on Christmas day our son and daughter were here and the four of us shared them with aperitifs in the garden in the sun.

In our medieval village there isn't room for gardens around the houses, so for centuries the villagers have gardened on the hillside, using water from the spring at the top.  We've bought a plot there and in this small space we're hoping to create a mixed garden of vegetables and ornamental drought-resistant Mediterranean plants and to enjoy eating the food that we grow there and I'll be blogging about our progress.  We've got a lot to learn, but we get help from our neighbours and benefit from the experience that has been passed on through the generations here.  And best of all, we've got the produce.  This winter we've been eating our way through 50 jars of preserved tomatoes, full of the taste of summer heat.  We need never buy a tin of tomatoes again!

 chaiselongue,

Please visit my garden -

Olives and Artichokes - in Languedoc region of France.

Hardly a vegetable is it?

I may plant artichoke though we are unlikely to utilise it as a vegetable, whilst I am less than impressed with their taste Carol thinks they are a complete waste of space on the plate. I think they would fine in the flower garden adding a variety of foliage that would suit the climate and be a foil to the softer and lusher leaved plants.If you have followed this Mediterranean garden blog for a while you may recall we turned down the chance to live on an artichoke farm.

Lest we be tempted to fiddle and fart around with artichokes in an attempt to turn them into food, we may better to try cardoons their larger scale and ornamental cousins.

Plot when purchased.

We decided that we would buy the farm house. 'It has potential' as they say on those re-location television shows. Rural tourism may be one of those possibilities, and this is an area the Spanish government says it is keen to promote and see developed. It remains to be seen if any of that famous Spanish bureaucracy is streamlined to enable the sector to operate without unnecessary governmental burden.

The plot measures 14,000 m2. It is flat land, and up until 18 years ago it was used for the production of barley (ordi as it is called in Catalan). The needs show that the original landowner shared the name of two of the neighbouring land owners though their relationship is unclear.

For the last eight years, three horses have grazed the land and now in late spring it appears to be unimproved pasture. Maybe a good tidying up and a once over with the plough and we can begin think about how we are going to use the land.

The rural areas of Spain are protected by law which basically says that to build a big house in a rural area you must have a big piece of land, generally 10% of the land can be built upon.

We had been offered a building plot of 20,000 m2 but it was a little bit too remote for Carol who also wondered about the maintenance of the land. A neighbour offered to farm the land but because he wanted to grow artichokes on our slice of Spain we declined. Artichokes I mean they are not even a proper vegetable are they?