We have not had much time in the villa over the years and the time and money we have spent have focussed on other parts of the house. Now that the landscaping part of the garden has been almost complete, we are in a much better position to focus on putting some plants in place and setting up a simple irrigation system.
The pergola in the lower garden has 8 piers supporting the timber crossbeams, so we have planted a mixture of some locally successful vine cultivars (2 x Moscatel, 1 x Red Globe, 1 x Superior) together with Plumbago, Jasmine, Bignonia & Passionflower.
In addition to this we have planted in pots, 3 small citrus trees, Orange, Lemon and Lime together with a Strelitzia or Bird of Paradise Plant.
We have chosen to create two small rockeries covering ground of around 6m2 each and both located in shade and full sun at different times of the day. At the time of writing both rockeries still require more rocks and importantly some plants too.
We have
laid stones on most of the area in an attempt to minimise the ongoing maintenance and tidy up the appearance of the space. We had two speciments of the Mexican Fan Palm take from seed and whether it proves to be a wise decision or not we have kept one of them in the place it landed and moved the other so that they are both now in the lower garden. It will be interesting to see if the specimen that we relocated survives as it was not moved until early August and ideally should have been removed at the beginning of the growing season in early May.
There is some more stone needed before the space is complete but we are getting there. Hopefully in a short space of time we will begin to see growth on some of the plants and the covering of the pergola and the development of a further shade area will not take too long.
Las Parras 