Gravel, lemons and how I ended up in hospital

How I wished I had listened to my husband. He kept telling me I was going to suffer, but being the martyr I am, I just had to carry on and prove I wasn’t the weakest link. Well, it served me right. Listening to lovely hubby would have avoided a visit to The General Hospital in Paphos.

And it was all over moving 27 tons of gravel for the garden. Let me tell you more about this.

But first - did you know that plants in Cyprus grow ten times faster – yes, ten times faster than those in the UK? So you would think that gardening on the island is easy - but actually, with a growth rate like that, it’s hard work. You will notice there is a huge amount of gravel used - and with good reason.

When we bought our villa, we had a 1,000 square metre plot. That is a pretty big garden to handle and we knew it would be a massive challenge. We wanted a low maintenance garden, so gravel was high on the agenda. It comes in several different colours, so that was great from a design perspective.

Saying it was a challenge was an understatement. In the beginning, clearing our garden took forever; it was a total and utter mess. To give you an idea, we could hardly see the villa amongst the overgrowth of trees and shrubs.

During the clearance, we found an old chest buried near the back border and wondered if we’d finally struck a pot of gold. No such luck, it was full of old rubbish. Then, surprisingly we found a huge anchor. Apparently the previous owner had a sea-faring connection, but we never did find out why it was buried in the undergrowth.

Anyway, section by section we cleared the garden. I lost count of the number of skips we hired, especially when we were pollarding the trees – on average, 25 feet out of each one - a task that seemed to never end.

Eventually though, there was light at the end of the tunnel. We finally reached the stage where the garden was ready, so it was time to start planting.

We used a top quality membrane (the thick black one you can buy in Cyprus is the most expensive, but it is the best and worth every penny). We laid this over the earth after planting up and then covered it with gravel. In all, we used 27 tons. This was delivered a few tons at a time and yes, we moved it all by wheelbarrow, which was seriously hard work.

This was when I ended up injuring my back – as I said before, lovely hubby saw that coming. After my hospital visit, transporting gravel was off the agenda for a while. (I hasten to add, I did fully recover).

Fortunately, one of our neighbours came to the rescue and in my absence, helped wheelbarrow the rest into the garden, so all was not lost.

An important point to note is not to scrimp on gravel – so many people do this and then regret it. You need your gravel to be at least 4 inches thick or the weeds will come through straight away. Oh, and remember to rake it regularly. This breaks up any weeds and also brightens it up. Gravel does eventually start to break down and becomes very dusty. It will need a top-up every four or five years to continue to look good.

How about colours? Well, white gravel is lovely - but in the very hot summer months, it is actually too bright to look at. We ended up changing some of ours because of this. But eventually, using different colours worked really well and we managed to create a beautiful Mediterranean garden.

Next week I am going to talk about irrigation systems – an essential for all gardens in Cyprus.

Until then, have a great weekend.

Best wishes

Jackie
The Overseas Guides Company
http://www.Cyprusbuyingguide.com