The
Mediterranean Garden Society

The MGS Garden at Sparoza A Diary
Occasional reports on the garden throughout the seasons of the garden, the plants and the work being undertaken. 2010 January February February / March March April May June July August September October November December 2009 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2008 January February March April May June July August September October November December
MARCH 2010
As the warm wet winter turned into a warm dry early spring, the garden at Sparoza was stunningly beautiful. Niggling worries about the lack of spring rain were put to one side because heavy downpours would for once be unwelcome. Sally, Peter and the volunteers worked tidying and tweaking to get everything in the garden ready for the great event – the making of a full-length video of Sally in the Sparoza garden. It had been a dream of many of us that a record of Sally's garden should be preserved on film and suddenly all the necessary elements were in place: the cost was covered by a generous grant and a member/film-maker was ready and willing to do the job. Terry Moyemont, who has been a friend of Sally and visitor to Sparoza for many years, was a professional film-maker before turning into a nurseryman and the Head of the Pacific North West Branch. For ten days he combined his two loves, basking in the pleasure of filming the garden in all the shades of light from dawn to dusk and shadowing Sally as she went about her tasks. At the same time he took a huge number of still photographs, some of which are reproduced below. We call it 'the garden at Sparoza' or 'the MGS garden' or even sometimes 'Jacky Tyrwhitt's garden' but let there be no mistake that this is Sally's garden. Miss Tyrwhitt founded it and the MGS sponsors it but in effect the garden as it is now is a pure expression of Sally's love, inspiration and skill. In the terraces she mostly has single specimens, each one positioned with knowledge and care, and described like a friend. "The original plant of this was given me years ago by Heidi Gildemeister" she tells you of an Eriocephalus africanus. "The mandrakes in Derek's garden came from the M…s' on Syros." Yet the plants are ruthlessly dug up and moved on if they prove too brutish or fail to thrive. Meanwhile the hillside becomes richer with the introduction of plants which have proved their drought-worthiness yet still the natural feeling of the phrygana is maintained. We wait with impatience to see how Terry has captured Sally's garden on film. And already Sally is planning for the autumn when the new garden assistant will arrive: what will move, what will stay and what will be sent "up the hillside". Terry has photographs from his previous visits but now they are historical records – visions of a garden which was beautiful but different. The MGS would like to express its sincere thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation whose grant made the filming of Sally's garden a reality. The film will be available to members in October 2010. A view of the phrygana below the house. Phlomis fruticosa by the pond. Along the terrace. Bulbine frutescens ‘Hallmark’. Crocosmia species. Scilla peruviana.
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2010
The Mediterranean Garden at Sparoza: a perfect mixture of Greek native and introduced mediterranean-climate plants in a natural setting. Photographs by Davina Michaelides. An unidentified Acanthus, possibly sub-tropical since it needs irrigation, in bud in the terrace. It loses it leaves in the summer. Fritillaria obliqua. Native to Greece and collected for Sparoza. Leucojum aestivum, Snowflake. Native to parts of Greece. Introduced at Sparoza. Tulipa saxatilis, Rock tulip. Native to Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes and introduced and multiplying at Sparoza. Hermodactylus tuberosus syn. Iris tuberosa, Widow iris. Native to most of Greece and wild at Sparoza. Barlia robertiana syn. Himantoglossum robertianum, Giant orchid. Wild at Sparoza. Gagea fistulosa and Muscari commutatum wild on the hillside. Chrysanthemum coronarium wild on the hillside. Gladiolus tristis, a wonderfully scented flower from South Africa. The terrace with two garden cistuses: white Cistus ladanifer var. petiolatus f. albiflorus, which accepts lime in the soil, and pink C. x argenteus ‘Peggy Sammons’ Tulipa boeotica syn. T. undulatifolia, a Greek native collected for Sparoza, among a winter-flowering Cotelydon hybrid and Rosmarinus officinalis which is widely naturalized in Greece. A Crocosmia species from South Africa growing in front of a wild Acanthus mollis at the foot of Yucca elephantipes from Mexico. Coronilla glauca ‘Citrina’, a cultivar bred from a Greek native, spilling out of the front bed. Lavandula dentata from the western Mediterranean with Phlomis russeliana from Turkey, Salvia disermas from South Africa and Osteospermum jucundum also from South Africa. The walled garden with an abundantly flowering bay tree and Acanthus balcanicus, a species native to the Balkans introduced and naturalized at Sparoza. Ophrys ferrum-equinum, Horseshoe orchid, wild on the hillside. A medley of calm greens of Greek natives amid the spring colour: Pinus halepensis, olive, Euphorbia dendroides and Ruscus hypophyllum with Viburnum tinus flowering in the background. The acanthus now in flower. Any ideas about the identity of this plant would be gratefully received.Please email.
FEBRUARY 2010
This winter, while our members in northern Europe and even in the south of Spain and France suffered from prolonged snow and cold, here in Attica we were enjoying a wonderfully mild wet season. The lightest of frosts when a little snow fell on the surrounding mountains has been the worst so far. February came in with a bit of a cold snap but soon the temperature was spring-like again, encouraging the wild flowers into a frenzy of blooming. The soil was damp to a good depth, as proved by how easy it was to pull up the weeds. But as the month progressed without any more rain we feared that an early drought might spoil the spring pleasures. At Sparoza pruning was one of the major jobs; shrubs like artemisia, previously dead-headed, were cut back into shape and the roses were pruned, although not the lovely Icebergs. Sally has found that her Icebergs do not respond well to pruning and get weaker rather than strong if pruned hard. Some of the olives on the estate hadn’t been touched for ages, so throughout the first two months of the year Peter Dinning set to with the saw to bring them to order and pile up logs for the fire. Unfortunately the good weather encouraged the Oxalis pes-caprae to spread as never before and all the garden help was engaged at one time or another in digging it up. With the soil so friable it was sometimes possible to get the plants out whole with bulbs and bulbils still attached to the end of the stem – but how frustrating when they then dropped off and disappeared back into the soil to reproduce next year. Although the oxalis grows most luxuriantly in the improved soil of the beds, it is also making its way into the wild. Asphodelus aestivus makes a marvellous show but it has become too rampant at Sparoza. As mentioned before, Sally has turned this into an advantage by letting the asphodels create planting pockets for her. Digging a hole in the rocky hillside is an arm-jarring job but digging up an asphodel is relatively easy and the holes left are just ready to be filled by something else - Narcissus papyraceus this time. One of the plants that attract compliments from visitors to the garden is a dark blue-flowered teucrium – Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum'. Planted in an irrigated terrace, this plant reproduces by suckering and Sally is able to use the young suckers to grow on in the nursery for plant exchanges. Out in the phrygana the same plant prospers without any summer water but does not sucker at all, perhaps to conserve its energy. Both Cyclamen graecum and C. persicum have self-seeded in the garden this year. Sally has grown cyclamen from seed on many occasions but it was a pleasure to see these strong little plants being potted up in the nursery; of course there is a certain satisfaction in getting something for nothing but more basically it is seeing nature melding with the artificialness of a garden. Olives planted 40 odd years ago to mask the water cistern, after pruning. (Fleur Pavlidis) Oxalis pes-caprae at the foot of the hillside. (Fleur Pavlidis) Asphodelus aestivus on the rampage. (Fleur Pavlidis) Teucrium fruticans‘Azureum’ in full flower in the first week of January. (Davina Michaelidis) The mild weather has meant that this Anisodontea malvastroides has flowered throughout the winter. (Fleur Pavlidis)
NOVEMBER 2009
In November and December the queen of trees at Sparoza is the Rhus lancea and this year the blossom was the best ever - the whole tree came alive with the dropping sprays of yellow '‘flowers'. As we stood admiring the picture, it struck me that the terraces below the house are now in the shade of a variety of mature trees. Some of them are well known to friends of the garden like the row of cypresses planted by Jacky Tyrwhitt as a windbreak at the north end of the terraces, and the pomegranate trees whose fruits - so gaily-coloured – have been photographed by many visitors. The fruit of the bitter orange trees in the same terrace is mentioned for its good marmalade qualities by Jacky Tyrwhitt in her book. Then there are the dancing olives. These are two trees which were cut back to the ground before Sally Razelou’s time and grew back again with multiple trunks. The patterns of the trunks, kept clean of branches for the first 1.5 metres, give the feeling of movement. The heart of one has been planted with a Cyclamen persicum shown in the Diary in February. The 'Golden Rain Tree' has never been identified to Sally’s satisfaction – Sophora japonica is the best guess. Now in autumn the leaves of the Ulmus parvifolia and Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree) are on the turn and starting to drop, as are those of the Ailanthus altissima at the south end of the terrace. Some visitors are surprised to see this tree, usually categorised as an invasive foreigner, given a place at Sparoza. Sally has it in a bed of its own where the smooth silver trunks are shown to full advantage and she values it as a decorative garden tree. This seems to be the female of this dioecious tree as it does not have the masses of unpleasantly smelling flowers of the male, in fact the tree seems to be sterile and does not flower at all. There is still a problem with suckers but compared with the effort required to cull seedlings it is not that great. Two other non-Europeans are a self-seeded Parkinsonia aculeata and a Grevillea robusta. The latter can only grow as tall as the gap between really hard winters will allow, but it never gives up and comes back from ground level after each great frost. Finally some natives: a Pistacia lentiscus in the middle terrace has been 'lifted' and grown as single-trunked tree to allow for planting underneath. This gives it an unconventional appearance since the lentiscus is usually a ground-hugging bush, made more so when they are chewed close by sheep and goats which graze in the wild in Greece. A Rhamnus alaternus has been similarly pruned into a tree. A Pinus pinea (Stone Pine), initially so useful as a mask for the airport in the Mesogia Plain below, has now grown out of proportion in the terraces and adds proof that masking is best performed by open screening rather than by a solid block. As always, the decision to fell a mature tree is one of the most difficult – as we should remember before we plant any tree destined to outgrow its position. Looking towards the cypresses we see the pomegranates, the Parkinsonia aculeata and the over-grown Stone Pine. Chris Wassenberg, who took this photograph in 2006, thinned out the branches of the pine whilst he was Garden Assistant. The dancing olives. Photograph by Davina Michaelides. The trunks of the Ailanthus altissima. Photograph by Fleur Pavlidis.
SEPTEMBER 2009
The beginning of September at Sparoza is all expectation as Sally awaits the first rains and the next Garden Assistant. They arrive almost synchronously and the new gardening year takes off. Peter Dinning comes to Sparoza having spent all his working life in horticulture in the UK. I asked him to give me his impressions after a month in what he described as his new career. His first comment was on how much he was enjoying the climate and the relaxed atmosphere and why the two were connected. He explained how in the UK the weather was so variable that if a task needed to be done in particular conditions then there was great pressure to get it completed before the conditions changed. In the mild month of September at Sparoza though, jobs had simply continued from day to day without stress. He had learnt from his previous employment in large elegant gardens to be tidy and careful with his tools but had been frustrated by the requirement to have every growing part of the garden always in perfect order. He preferred the more natural approach at Sparoza where even in the beds wild flowers and random seedlings are often welcomed and plants are frequently left to grow as they wish. There were many plants in the garden and on the hillside which were quite new to Peter and which he was looking forward to studying, but even the plants he was familiar with were growing differently and needed different treatment. In general he realized that he had much to learn but hoped soon enough to be able to contribute suggestions to the garden’s development; he had already understood that Sally was open and receptive to his ideas, which was quite a change for him from working under strict landscape designers. The month ends and summer has returned without any further rain having fallen on Attica although elsewhere the grapes are rotting on the vines because of the constant downpours. Will October see the rain clouds coming our way? Garden Assistant Peter Dinning working on the hillside with Sally and a volunteer in the background. Sally plans to plant more Liriope muscari in the shady part of the garden among the Iris japonica which flower in spring.
AUGUST 2009
As August comes to an end and we await the first autumn rains, Sally Razelou tells me that she has maintained the garden (and house) since the last rains at the beginning of May with a remarkably low 78 cubic metres of water. She will describe her irrigation regime for 2009 in a future issue of The Mediterranean Garden, while my mind now turns to what I know about the changes in the watering system in the garden. When the hillside terraces where first constructed, cement irrigation channels were fashioned along the edge of each one as an adaptation of the traditional earth channels used for centuries by farmers in their vegetable plots. Such a channel is visible in the photo below. Jacky Tyrwhitt watered by means of these channels when the terraces were first planted, but after a few seasons it became clear that they were too inflexible and wasteful of water so hand-watering had to take over. Coming forward to 2000, the MGS had taken over the garden more formally and was financing a garden assistant and the purchase of many new plants. Hand-watering became too time-consuming so a drip irrigation system was installed throughout the terraces, in some of the front beds and up the hillside. Apart from on the hillside, the system used double-walled perforated piping rather than individual drippers and was controlled automatically by a 4-programme, 12-circuit timer. Unfortunately the system relied on the water pressure created by having the water cistern at the top of the hill so the watering pipes on the hill which were supposed to irrigate the newly planted trees never delivered sufficient water. In addition, within a few years the hard water from the well started to fur up many of the perforations in the pipes and sections of the beds were left dry. By then, however, the whole philosophy of mediterranean gardening was changing and we were at last accepting the fact that daily and even weekly watering had to be reserved for pots and vegetables in the former case and for a small proportion of the plants in our gardens in the latter. Heidi Gildemeister’s waterwise approach was leading the way. Sally therefore declined offers to renew the system, preferring to make do with a combination of systems, part old, part new, with sprays and drippers; eventually the entire garden was watered by hand as described in July 2008, while the volume of irrigation water used was reduced. By 2008 it was down to 73 cubic metres. Now was the time to strike a balance between water consumption and plant variety. The number of deaths occurring showed clearly that many mediterranean plants could not survive without help in the harsh conditions of Sparoza, so in 2009 Sally returned to an irrigation system more finely tuned this time to the plants and controlled by her rather than by an automatic timer so that each circuit could be given the water needed. Now at the end of August the plants do not have the lush appearance achieved by abundant watering, they are hardened and quiet but surviving to come awake again in the October “spring”. A close up of the cement watering channel, long since disused, taken in September when the Haemanthus coccineus is just appearing. Plumbago auriculata flowers profusely with a little irrigation. At the end of August the Amaryllis belladonna suddenly opens. It has been bone dry all summer. Photographs by Davina Michaelides
MAY 2009
In most of Greece May made little pretence of being part of spring this year. The earlier cool, wet weather had provided us with an abundance of wildflowers for our May Day wreaths but almost immediately the temperature rose into the 30s and summer had arrived. Sally recorded a few drops of rain at Sparoza on 6th May but from then on the phrygana quickly turned from green to brown and by the second half of the month it was time for mowing. Many people regret the passing of the scythe — in skilled hands the grass could be cut quite quickly with a graceful swish. Now anyone with strength enough can get out the motor strimmer and amidst much noise and dust another unpleasant job is done. Young Antoine Quelen, on placement from the landscape architecture college at Blois (ENSNP), was “volunteered” for the task this time. The volunteers themselves took on the weeding of the gravel path which runs through the triangular section of phrygana below the house, so that by the end of the month the whole area had taken on its tidy summer appearance. In the beds the self-sown annuals bloomed their last and were then fed to the compost pit. Sally spread seeds from the larkspurs and delphiniums into the phrygana but knows that their performance there will be quite different from that in the garden proper — their growth stunted and their flowers short-lived. Late spring flowers of phlomis, salvias, echium, wallflowers, rose and lampranthus kept the garden looking gay despite the gaps where the annuals had been. How to deal with the gaps left after the annuals have finished is one of the challenges of a mediterranean garden. Here at Sparoza an area shaded by trees where the larkspurs seed and grow is planted thickly with autumn bulbs, Zephyranthes candida and Belladonna lilies (Amaryllis belladonna). Sally has also tried agapanthus as a filler but finds that in full sun its leaves are bleached to an unappetizing grey colour. Other solutions are lacking at the moment apart from actually using the gaps as part of the design of the summer garden. There was a happy surprise in the nursery when Sally spied an unusual looking ‘weed’ growing in the gravel. It turned out to be a seedling of a Mexican annual brought to the nursery some time ago but subsequently lost. With thistle-like leaves and oenothera-like flowers it is a strange little plant called Argemone ochroleuca. Students from the ENSNP at Blois, Antoine Quelen and Joséphine Pinatel. The volunteers at work weeding the gravel path. Consolida spp and Papaver rhoeas in the shady part of the garden to be followed later by Zephyranthes candida and Amaryllis belladonna. These poppies are not growing in a bed but in a paved area where the stone flags sit in soil. It will revert to a sitting area at the end of the month. Echium piniana growing in a pleasing contrast with the trunk of an Ailanthus altissima. This tree, often despised for its invasive disposition, is used very effectively at Sparoza. Self-seeded Argemone ochroleuca. Photographs by Davina Michaelides
APRIL 2009
Many years ago when we were planning an MGS exhibition in Greece, the President, Katherine Greenberg, suggested the title Out of the Wild and Into the Garden. Those plans never bore fruit, but in fact there is an exhibition that could go by that name every April at the MGS garden at Sparoza. The hillside phrygana is the ultimate wild garden − flowering fit to burst; green shoots covering every shrub; a feast for the eyes, nose and emotions. Of course this is a garden. All the trees have been planted by Jacky Tyrwhitt or Sally, as we can tell from the old photos of a stripped, bare landscape. The Pistachio lentiscus have been clipped and the phlomis dead-headed while the oat grasses are constantly pulled up before they seed and the grass cut as soon as it dries up. And of course Sally constantly adds plants here and there, trying them out for appearance and suitability. Some take to the phrygana conditions without complaint − the bearded irises for example. Others may survive as long as they have the help of the introductory watering but then fade away. Sally doesn’t insist by replanting the same plant and changing the care regime. The majority of the new plants have been propagated in the nursery so she knows that the failure will not have been due to bad root development but to lack of resistance to the harsh conditions. She notes the result and moves on to try something else, letting nature be her guide. As I was buying some potting soil from my local nurseryman this month I noticed that he was loading up lawn turfs. I looked at him askance and could not stop myself remonstrating. He shrugged his shoulders and replied simply: "Some people have money and think they are God". Well, the Sparoza garden is run on a shoestring and Sally regards herself as a servant rather than a god, or rather as a custodian of the beauty of spring. Some of the spring treasures in close-up: Campanula drabifolia Lomelosia brachiata (syn Scabiosa brachiata) Crupina crupinastrum The Ornithogalum arabicum has seeded itself all around the garden – and paths – so Sally is encouraging it to move on to the hillside. April is the month when we remember the crucifixion, yet it is the Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum) which brightens the countryside. This specimen in the garden has attractive purple seed pods from summer to autumn.
JANUARY 2009
A good beginning to the gardening year as the rains continued and the weather stayed cold but above freezing. Although in terms of millimetres (75.5) the amount of rain has not been as much as in some previous years, the kind of weather has been ideal − the rainfall has been steady and regular with few storms heavy enough to cause the water to run off unabsorbed. Even on dry days the skies have been cloudy and the atmosphere so heavy that transpiration has been limited. Not great for the rheumatism but the ground has stayed soft and damp − comforting for the plants which were suffering by the end of the long summer drought. On the hillside the anemones are back; they're at least a month late and, as Sally remarks, rather stunted in the length of flower stalk, but just as many as ever. It's a relief. Another happy piece of news is that the Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis) are almost free of caterpillar nests this year. They were thoroughly cleaned by the garden assistant, Jane Shaw, last year and the effect is notable. Down in the village, trees which were obviously neglected are covered in nests and the processional caterpillars (Pytiocamba) will be on the march soon enough. The terraces at Sparoza are always changing as Sally removes some plants which have outgrown their position and divides and thins out others. Dead subjects are replaced and a whole terrace gets a new look. This year the bed surrounding the 'threshing floor' suffered a number of drought casualties, including the large Ptilostemon chamaepeuce pictured in the June 2008 diary entry and visible as a dead mass in background of the December 2008 photograph of Agave americana 'Marginata'. The ground has now been cleared and the new residents are waiting to take their places. We won't mention the Oxalis pes-caprae − the bane of the volunteers' lives − but end on the sweetly-scented Cyclamen persicum which is now at its best. The original plant which has been a feature of the garden for many years has been joined by two others, brought from England by Jennie Gay and planted up close to the trunks of a pruned olive − a combination so natural and satisfying that one longs to replicate it. The anemones are back, here growing on the hillside path which is edged with the trunks of long-dead pines. Healthy Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis). The volunteers clearing away the dead wood round the 'threshing floor'. Photograph by Maria Paraskeviades. Sally Razelou in her best working clothes weeding outside the gardener's annexe. Photograph by Christa Vayanos. Dull days have meant less transpiration. Meanwhile the Oxalis pes-caprae crowds out any natural vegetation. Cyclamen persicum planted under an olive. As long as the temperature is not below freezing for a prolonged period, the faithful variegated abutilon flowers on all winter.
DECEMBER 2008
Where are the anemones? The last month of the year brought plenty of rain and frequent warnings of frost and snow although the latter fortunately did not affect the Sparoza garden. Sally was able to continue work, planting out using plants propagated in the nursery. As the autumn-flowering Cyclamen hederifolium faded away the Paperwhites (Narcissus papyraceus), first introduced into the garden by Jacky Tyrwhitt and since planted throughout the phrygana by Sally, began their pure white display and their heavy perfuming of the air. The bulbs multiply so readily that in any garden a few will soon become a mass. But what about the anemones? Anemone coronaria has always been one of the glories of the hillside, blooming in the depths of winter in a profusion of colour, yet this December they are marked by their absence. I consulted Making a Garden on a Greek Hillside to check Jacky Tyrwhitt's experience only to find that she too describes them as a glory which started blooming in December and continued until at least February. One of my embarrassing memories from living at Sparoza as a young woman was running out to remonstrate with a group of village women who were gathering anemones by the armful. Only later did I learn that this was an established custom in the countryside that no pesky foreigner − not even the respected Jaqueline Tyrwhitt − could influence. Sparoza is no longer part of the countryside nor would the ladies of Peania thank you for calling them village women (horiatisses), yet the strange urge to cut huge quantities of wildflowers can still be observed in Greece − primroses, poppies and orchids cut by the dozen and then left to wilt and die in the car. Profusion breeds complacency but if the anemones can disappear from the protected environment of Sparoza the omens are not good. We wait impatiently to see if it is just that their flowering is very late this year due to the lack of rain in the earlier part of autumn, hoping that the anemones will show themselves in January. If only our computers could transmit the wonderful perfume of Narcissus papyraceus. A large Iris unguicularis was divided during the propagations workshops held at the 2007 AGM Symposium and the smaller plants have not yet got back into their full flowering swing. This cultivar of Teucrium fruticans has particularly striking dark blue flowers: another plant to brighten the winter. A pot of Sedum kamtschaticum is a classic sight in Greek courtyard gardens. It is a wonderfully tough plant that can survive long periods of drought in its pot without looking too miserable. The variegated Agave americana 'Marginata' makes an interesting backdrop in this dry bed throughout the year. Photos by Davina Michaelides
SEPTEMBER 2008
September came in this year as it should, with days of soft, penetrating rain. Sally excitedly recorded the millimeters on her chart as the garden broke into its ‘second spring’. Imperceptibly the plants started to look more alive and then colour reasserted itself as blooms reappeared –Sternbergia lutea, Zephyranthus, Amaryllis belladona, Tulbaghia violacea and Cyclamen graeca among the bulbs, and roses, bougainvillea, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, Pavonia hastata and Liriope muscari among the herbaceous plants. Only those plants whose survival is in the balance will need a little longer to show signs of life. Suddenly in a terrace bed we can seethe exotic Haemanthus coccineus – deep scarlet flowers coming and going before the huge rounded leaves emerge. As the month proceeds seedlings of Cerinthe retorta and Delphinium staphisagria start to appear en masse, to be thinned and left only where they can grow unfettered. Unfortunately an unwelcome guest also returns. In the lists of harmful invasive plants (some of which are mentioned in TMG 54), South African Oxalis pes-caprae does not rank very high since farmers are not much bothered by it, but it is one of our greatest garden pests. Forty years ago Jacky Tyrwhitt was relaxed about letting it spread in her garden at Sparoza because she enjoyed the yellow flowers in spring and Sally has been battling against it ever since. The effects can be unexpected. In an attempt not to recycle it through the garden, the pulled oxalis along with other weedings from affected beds is gathered for the rubbish rather than the compost heap. This means that the compost mix is short of soft waste matter and the natural breakdown of the hard wood prunings etc is retarded. Without a male garden assistant (or indeed any garden assistant) this year to introduce a little ‘activator’ into the compost heap (see Compost-making at Sparoza TMG 39), piles of unrotted waste accumulate. “Perhaps the neighbours would give us their grass mowings” was the heretical suggestion of one of the volunteers. For yes indeed, the Sparoza hill is now dotted with villas sporting gardens which grow in defiance of the natural setting – the olives, orchids and stones having been replaced by leylandii cypress, lawns and pools. The shy Liriope muscari is one of the first plants to flower after the rains. Haemanthus coccineus from South Africa – a totally hardy exotic in the terrace. Will this artemisia revive? An unusual white Thevetia peruviana in a pot to the south of the house has been blooming all summer long. Photos by Davina Michaelides
JULY 2008
Dead or Alive As the summer progresses we are grateful in Attica for a cooling breeze which keeps the temperature below heatwave levels, but the air carries no moisture and the thirsty plants are obliged to put up their drought-stress defences. By July in Sparoza the phrygana has gone into summer dormancy – the medics (Medicago arborea), tree germanders (Teucrium fruticans), Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, helichrysums and cistus are in their natural desiccated state. They look as if they are dead or dying but in fact they are surviving - though they differ from their sisters in the wild in being neatly dead-headed and clipped into shape. Fortunately there are other plants for which their dormant state does not mean loss of colour: on the hillside the cypress, lentisks (Pistacia lentiscus), Cneorum tricoccon, Rhamnus alaternus and of course the pines set off the spiky dryness of the desiccated greys. Yet Sally is always vigilant. Having ditched the inefficient automatic watering system which we had been planning to renovate this year, Sally is experimenting with ‘emergency room’ watering all done by hose and hand. Plants regarded as totally drought-tolerant are nevertheless watched for signs of over-stress. Some rhamnus, spiraea and even lentisks and a small Arbutus unedo, after two statistically dry winters, have shown signs of succumbing to stress and have been given emergency water rations to save them. Meanwhile less drought-tolerant plants, mostly in the terraces, are given deep watering (that is, as far as you can call it deep when the underlying rock is so close to the surface) every so often. But throughout the garden there is a feeling of stillness - no lush growth, no fresh green weeds nor any abundance of flowers. In fact at this time of year bright colour is mostly confined to the pot plants in the true Greek manner. Alas, Sally no longer uses feta tins but I somehow feel we should find some for her to give her entrance a true national flavour. A clipped medic next to a green Pistacia lentiscus with a dormant Euphorbia acanthothamnos in the background which shapes itself naturally into a cushion. The Cneorum tricoccon is reliably green in the summer. Beside it towards the back a Convolvulus cneorum looking good but with the help of regular water. One of the few flowering plants, Plumbago capensis, plus visitor. Not all the plants are dead-headed. Here the Ptilostemon chamaepeuce looks handsome with its dried flowers, as does the Cotyledon orbiculata Sally’s daily task.
MAY 2008
April and May are the months when Sparoza is home to students on placement from the French Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Nature et du Paysage of Blois. Due to the relative isolation of Sparoza for those without personal transport, Sally Razelou generously offers places to two students so that they have company. The students are normally young and inexperienced but under Sally’s close guidance they learn the practice of mediterranean gardening and are helped to identify the plants both in the garden terraces and growing wild on the hillside. Sally also takes them ‘botanising’, usually near the archaeological sites around Athens. Being almost invariably artistic, the students produce reports for the college which are beautifully illustrated by their line drawings and watercolours. And of course they take some excellent photographs, a few of which appear here. The two months see a valuable exchange – the garden has extra hands during the busy spring period and the students absorb knowledge about the demands of a mediterranean garden and the way it can be designed to incorporate the natural landscape alongside beds and terraces. After the prolonged spring the heat arrived suddenly as it always does and the spring flowers immediately ran to seed. By the end of May the dry vegetation in the phrygana had been cut and the estate was taking on its summer feel. Formerly Sally preferred to hand-pull the dry grasses to protect the wildlife – in particular the ladybirds. However this labour of love became too labour-intensive and the grass is now cut using a petrol-motored strimmer. The garden is an example of the theory set out by Cali Doxiadis in A Summer Dilemma, TMG no 50. To counteract the lack of colour and excitement in the summer garden Sally keeps it scrupulously maintained: all the gravel paths are weed-free, the bushes are neatly pruned, the flowers dead-headed and the plant rubbish cleared up. It helps of course to have the weekly attendance of the volunteers who are willing to unwind and chat whilst performing these repetitive tasks. Photos of 2007 by Marie Gallienne and Eloyse Descurninges Marie and Eloyse. View up the hill on 12th April 2007 taken by Eloyse. Erysimum “Bowles’ Mauve’ taken by Eloyse. Sally makes them flower a second time by removing the flowers just as they start to fade. They make a wonderful flower arrangement in a low pot. The flower of Euphorbia acanthothamnus taken by Marie. The flower of the pomegranate taken by Marie. Photos of 2008 Yannick Campion and Elodie Petra Poppies seeded into the gravel paths, 9th May 2008. This amazing yucca is home to tens of nesting small sparrow-like birds called sparos in the local Albanian language. The upper terrace in its lush spring verdancy on 18th April 2008. See also www.mediterraneangardensociety.org/news-students.html
APRIL 2008
Styrax officinalis A large deciduous shrub native to Italy, Greece, Turkey and California with sweet-scented white flowers which open in late spring. This makes an attractive garden plant though I have never seen it in a nursery. If properly grown it needs no summer irrigation. Despite its size it should be planted where the light fragrance will drift across a path rather that at the distant back of a bed. In the MGS garden it grows next to the lower road. Botanically, it is interesting. The bark gives a resin which has been used for medicinal purposes. Arthur Gibson notes: " Uses of natural products from bark of Styrax date back at least to the Sumerians, who incorporated the terpenoid resin storax into a variety of medicinal preparations, such as liniments and ointments, applied to sores, aches, and infections. Some accounts say that the inner bark was crushed, and then hot water was used to extracted the terpenoids, whereas others mention boiling the bark and skimming the insoluble resin scum before pressing the inner bark for more extract. From that storax is refined into an opaque liquid having the viscosity of honey and the fragrance of balsam." This was known in ancient Greece where Theophrastus gave the plant the name Styrax which has remained unaltered ever since. In the 1750s, Linnaeus described Styrax officinalis known to him from the wild in Southern Europe. It turned out to be also a native shrub of Southern California, Styrax officinalis L. var. redivivus (Torrey). Arthur Gibson again: "Three decades ago there was extensive discussion about intercontinental disjunctions. Certain genera and a handful of species have very large discontinuities in their range, some having gaps of ten to twenty thousand kilometers. Styrax officinalis is one of those, being at approximately the same latitude but nine time zones away: California to Italy. This has been termed by Dr. Thorne (in 1972) as the Mediterranean-American disjunction. How and when the populations of this species became so separated is still a matter of speculation, because there are other plants of the Mediterranean region that have very closely related species in California. Other species of Styrax also occur in North America; for example, there are four native species in the flora of Texas, and the many of species in the genus are native to eastern Asia. The only reasonable conclusion is that this genus was once widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere and became restricted to certain smaller zone." Fleur Pavlidis 1 ARTHUR C. GIBSON, MEMBG Director, Newsletter Spring 2002Volume 5(2), Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden UCLA
FEBRUARY 2008
After several weeks of mostly bleak winter weather, the meteorological office forecast snow for the south of Greece – snow which would settle. Right on time the storm came and for three days the garden was covered with up to 30 cm of snow. Sally and her assistant Jane had prepared for it by covering many of the less hardy plants with fleece, and when the snow thawed it appeared that not much damage had been done. Yet as the days passed more and more parts of the affected plants turned brown and by the end of the week many were looking very burnt, though probably not dead. The worst affected were: Duranta erecta, Homolocladium platycladum, Clerodendrum floribundum, Leonotis leonurus, Pavonia hastata, Carissa macrocarpa, Eriocephalus africanus, Tecomaria capensis, Salvia discolor, Echium candicans, Myoporum laetum, Crocosmia, Clivia and Ornithogalum nutans. The Melianthus major which had made such a show in 2007 lost its large leaves but the flower buds were unharmed. While the terraces were left looking generally rather sad, the wild flowers took precedence and the hillside burst into colour with anemones, Muscari commutatum, Cerinthe retorta, Silene and numerous white and yellow daisies and marigolds. Hermodactylus tuberosus (the Widow Iris) appeared in the paths where it has self-seeded profusely and a collected specimen of Fritillaria obliqua in one of the beds is now proudly in bud. Snow on the terraces. Jane Shaw It took several days for the Crocosmia leaves and flowers to turn completely brown. Jane Shaw The Salvia discolor, in flower just before the snow, may not have survived despite being covered. Jane Shaw Muscari commutatum with its characteristic two-toned flowers. Davina Michaelides Hermodactylus tuberosus has spread from the hillside into the garden. Davina Michaelides Although locally abundant in the wild, Fritillaria obliqua is hard to grow as a garden plant. Davina Michaelides The sweet pink of this Helleborus orientalis caught the photographer’s eye. Davina Michaelides
JANUARY 2008

The MGS Garden at Sparoza
A Diary

Occasional reports on the garden throughout the seasons of the garden, the plants and the work being undertaken.

2010
January February February / March March April May June
July August September October November December

2009
January February March April May June July
August September October November December

2008
January February March April May June July
August September October November December

MARCH 2010

As the warm wet winter turned into a warm dry early spring, the garden at Sparoza was stunningly beautiful. Niggling worries about the lack of spring rain were put to one side because heavy downpours would for once be unwelcome. Sally, Peter and the volunteers worked tidying and tweaking to get everything in the garden ready for the great event – the making of a full-length video of Sally in the Sparoza garden.

It had been a dream of many of us that a record of Sally's garden should be preserved on film and suddenly all the necessary elements were in place: the cost was covered by a generous grant and a member/film-maker was ready and willing to do the job. Terry Moyemont, who has been a friend of Sally and visitor to Sparoza for many years, was a professional film-maker before turning into a nurseryman and the Head of the Pacific North West Branch. For ten days he combined his two loves, basking in the pleasure of filming the garden in all the shades of light from dawn to dusk and shadowing Sally as she went about her tasks. At the same time he took a huge number of still photographs, some of which are reproduced below.

We call it 'the garden at Sparoza' or 'the MGS garden' or even sometimes 'Jacky Tyrwhitt's garden' but let there be no mistake that this is Sally's garden. Miss Tyrwhitt founded it and the MGS sponsors it but in effect the garden as it is now is a pure expression of Sally's love, inspiration and skill. In the terraces she mostly has single specimens, each one positioned with knowledge and care, and described like a friend. "The original plant of this was given me years ago by Heidi Gildemeister" she tells you of an Eriocephalus africanus. "The mandrakes in Derek's garden came from the M…s' on Syros." Yet the plants are ruthlessly dug up and moved on if they prove too brutish or fail to thrive. Meanwhile the hillside becomes richer with the introduction of plants which have proved their drought-worthiness yet still the natural feeling of the phrygana is maintained.

We wait with impatience to see how Terry has captured Sally's garden on film.

And already Sally is planning for the autumn when the new garden assistant will arrive: what will move, what will stay and what will be sent "up the hillside". Terry has photographs from his previous visits but now they are historical records – visions of a garden which was beautiful but different.

The MGS would like to express its sincere thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation whose grant made the filming of Sally's garden a reality. The film will be available to members in October 2010.

A view of the phrygana below the house.

Phlomis fruticosa by the pond.

Along the terrace.

Bulbine frutescens ‘Hallmark’.

Crocosmia species.

Scilla peruviana.

FEBRUARY / MARCH 2010

The Mediterranean Garden at Sparoza: a perfect mixture of Greek native and introduced mediterranean-climate plants in a natural setting. Photographs by Davina Michaelides.

An unidentified Acanthus, possibly sub-tropical since it needs
irrigation, in bud in the terrace. It loses it leaves in the summer.

Fritillaria obliqua. Native to Greece
and collected for Sparoza.

Leucojum aestivum, Snowflake. Native to parts
of Greece. Introduced at Sparoza.

Tulipa saxatilis, Rock tulip. Native to Crete, Karpathos and Rhodes
and introduced and multiplying at Sparoza.

Hermodactylus tuberosus syn. Iris tuberosa, Widow iris.
Native to most of Greece and wild at Sparoza.

Barlia robertiana syn. Himantoglossum robertianum,
Giant orchid. Wild at Sparoza.

Gagea fistulosa and Muscari commutatum wild on the hillside.

Chrysanthemum coronarium wild on the hillside.

Gladiolus tristis, a wonderfully scented
flower from South Africa.

The terrace with two garden cistuses: white Cistus ladanifer
var. petiolatus f. albiflorus, which accepts lime in the soil,
and pink C. x argenteus ‘Peggy Sammons’

Tulipa boeotica syn. T. undulatifolia, a Greek native
collected for Sparoza, among a winter-flowering
Cotelydon hybrid and Rosmarinus officinalis
which is widely naturalized in Greece.

A Crocosmia species from South Africa growing in front of a wild
Acanthus mollis at the foot of Yucca elephantipes from Mexico.

Coronilla glauca ‘Citrina’, a cultivar bred from a Greek native,
spilling out of the front bed.

Lavandula dentata from the western Mediterranean with
Phlomis russeliana from Turkey, Salvia disermas from South Africa
and Osteospermum jucundum also from South Africa.

The walled garden with an abundantly flowering bay tree and
Acanthus balcanicus, a species native to the Balkans introduced
and naturalized at Sparoza.

Ophrys ferrum-equinum, Horseshoe orchid,
wild on the hillside.

A medley of calm greens of Greek natives amid the spring colour:
Pinus halepensis, olive, Euphorbia dendroides and Ruscus hypophyllum
with Viburnum tinus flowering in the background.

The acanthus now in flower. Any ideas about the identity of this plant
would be gratefully received.Please email.

FEBRUARY 2010

This winter, while our members in northern Europe and even in the south of Spain and France suffered from prolonged snow and cold, here in Attica we were enjoying a wonderfully mild wet season. The lightest of frosts when a little snow fell on the surrounding mountains has been the worst so far. February came in with a bit of a cold snap but soon the temperature was spring-like again, encouraging the wild flowers into a frenzy of blooming. The soil was damp to a good depth, as proved by how easy it was to pull up the weeds. But as the month progressed without any more rain we feared that an early drought might spoil the spring pleasures.

At Sparoza pruning was one of the major jobs; shrubs like artemisia, previously dead-headed, were cut back into shape and the roses were pruned, although not the lovely Icebergs. Sally has found that her Icebergs do not respond well to pruning and get weaker rather than strong if pruned hard. Some of the olives on the estate hadn’t been touched for ages, so throughout the first two months of the year Peter Dinning set to with the saw to bring them to order and pile up logs for the fire.

Unfortunately the good weather encouraged the Oxalis pes-caprae to spread as never before and all the garden help was engaged at one time or another in digging it up. With the soil so friable it was sometimes possible to get the plants out whole with bulbs and bulbils still attached to the end of the stem – but how frustrating when they then dropped off and disappeared back into the soil to reproduce next year. Although the oxalis grows most luxuriantly in the improved soil of the beds, it is also making its way into the wild.

Asphodelus aestivus makes a marvellous show but it has become too rampant at Sparoza. As mentioned before, Sally has turned this into an advantage by letting the asphodels create planting pockets for her. Digging a hole in the rocky hillside is an arm-jarring job but digging up an asphodel is relatively easy and the holes left are just ready to be filled by something else - Narcissus papyraceus this time.

One of the plants that attract compliments from visitors to the garden is a dark blue-flowered teucrium – Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum'. Planted in an irrigated terrace, this plant reproduces by suckering and Sally is able to use the young suckers to grow on in the nursery for plant exchanges. Out in the phrygana the same plant prospers without any summer water but does not sucker at all, perhaps to conserve its energy.

Both Cyclamen graecum and C. persicum have self-seeded in the garden this year. Sally has grown cyclamen from seed on many occasions but it was a pleasure to see these strong little plants being potted up in the nursery; of course there is a certain satisfaction in getting something for nothing but more basically it is seeing nature melding with the artificialness of a garden.

Olives planted 40 odd years ago to mask the water cistern, after pruning.
(Fleur Pavlidis)

Oxalis pes-caprae at the foot of the hillside.
(Fleur Pavlidis)

Asphodelus aestivus on the rampage.
(Fleur Pavlidis)

Teucrium fruticans‘Azureum’ in full flower
in the first week of January.
(Davina Michaelidis)

The mild weather has meant that this Anisodontea malvastroides has
flowered throughout the winter.
(Fleur Pavlidis)

NOVEMBER 2009

In November and December the queen of trees at Sparoza is the Rhus lancea and this year the blossom was the best ever - the whole tree came alive with the dropping sprays of yellow '‘flowers'. As we stood admiring the picture, it struck me that the terraces below the house are now in the shade of a variety of mature trees. Some of them are well known to friends of the garden like the row of cypresses planted by Jacky Tyrwhitt as a windbreak at the north end of the terraces, and the pomegranate trees whose fruits - so gaily-coloured – have been photographed by many visitors. The fruit of the bitter orange trees in the same terrace is mentioned for its good marmalade qualities by Jacky Tyrwhitt in her book. Then there are the dancing olives. These are two trees which were cut back to the ground before Sally Razelou’s time and grew back again with multiple trunks. The patterns of the trunks, kept clean of branches for the first 1.5 metres, give the feeling of movement. The heart of one has been planted with a Cyclamen persicum shown in the Diary in February. The 'Golden Rain Tree' has never been identified to Sally’s satisfaction – Sophora japonica is the best guess.

Now in autumn the leaves of the Ulmus parvifolia and Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree) are on the turn and starting to drop, as are those of the Ailanthus altissima at the south end of the terrace. Some visitors are surprised to see this tree, usually categorised as an invasive foreigner, given a place at Sparoza. Sally has it in a bed of its own where the smooth silver trunks are shown to full advantage and she values it as a decorative garden tree. This seems to be the female of this dioecious tree as it does not have the masses of unpleasantly smelling flowers of the male, in fact the tree seems to be sterile and does not flower at all. There is still a problem with suckers but compared with the effort required to cull seedlings it is not that great.

Two other non-Europeans are a self-seeded Parkinsonia aculeata and a Grevillea robusta. The latter can only grow as tall as the gap between really hard winters will allow, but it never gives up and comes back from ground level after each great frost.

Finally some natives: a Pistacia lentiscus in the middle terrace has been 'lifted' and grown as single-trunked tree to allow for planting underneath. This gives it an unconventional appearance since the lentiscus is usually a ground-hugging bush, made more so when they are chewed close by sheep and goats which graze in the wild in Greece. A Rhamnus alaternus has been similarly pruned into a tree. A Pinus pinea (Stone Pine), initially so useful as a mask for the airport in the Mesogia Plain below, has now grown out of proportion in the terraces and adds proof that masking is best performed by open screening rather than by a solid block. As always, the decision to fell a mature tree is one of the most difficult – as we should remember before we plant any tree destined to outgrow its position.

Looking towards the cypresses we see the pomegranates, the
Parkinsonia aculeata and the over-grown Stone Pine. Chris
Wassenberg, who took this photograph in 2006, thinned out the
branches of the pine whilst he was Garden Assistant.

The dancing olives.
Photograph by Davina Michaelides.

The trunks of the Ailanthus altissima.
Photograph by Fleur Pavlidis.

SEPTEMBER 2009

The beginning of September at Sparoza is all expectation as Sally awaits the first rains and the next Garden Assistant. They arrive almost synchronously and the new gardening year takes off.

Peter Dinning comes to Sparoza having spent all his working life in horticulture in the UK. I asked him to give me his impressions after a month in what he described as his new career. His first comment was on how much he was enjoying the climate and the relaxed atmosphere and why the two were connected. He explained how in the UK the weather was so variable that if a task needed to be done in particular conditions then there was great pressure to get it completed before the conditions changed. In the mild month of September at Sparoza though, jobs had simply continued from day to day without stress. He had learnt from his previous employment in large elegant gardens to be tidy and careful with his tools but had been frustrated by the requirement to have every growing part of the garden always in perfect order. He preferred the more natural approach at Sparoza where even in the beds wild flowers and random seedlings are often welcomed and plants are frequently left to grow as they wish. There were many plants in the garden and on the hillside which were quite new to Peter and which he was looking forward to studying, but even the plants he was familiar with were growing differently and needed different treatment. In general he realized that he had much to learn but hoped soon enough to be able to contribute suggestions to the garden’s development; he had already understood that Sally was open and receptive to his ideas, which was quite a change for him from working under strict landscape designers.

The month ends and summer has returned without any further rain having fallen on Attica although elsewhere the grapes are rotting on the vines because of the constant downpours. Will October see the rain clouds coming our way?

Garden Assistant Peter Dinning working on the hillside with Sally
and a volunteer in the background.

Sally plans to plant more Liriope muscari in the shady part
of the garden among the Iris japonica which flower in spring.

AUGUST 2009

As August comes to an end and we await the first autumn rains, Sally Razelou tells me that she has maintained the garden (and house) since the last rains at the beginning of May with a remarkably low 78 cubic metres of water. She will describe her irrigation regime for 2009 in a future issue of The Mediterranean Garden, while my mind now turns to what I know about the changes in the watering system in the garden.

When the hillside terraces where first constructed, cement irrigation channels were fashioned along the edge of each one as an adaptation of the traditional earth channels used for centuries by farmers in their vegetable plots. Such a channel is visible in the photo below. Jacky Tyrwhitt watered by means of these channels when the terraces were first planted, but after a few seasons it became clear that they were too inflexible and wasteful of water so hand-watering had to take over.

Coming forward to 2000, the MGS had taken over the garden more formally and was financing a garden assistant and the purchase of many new plants. Hand-watering became too time-consuming so a drip irrigation system was installed throughout the terraces, in some of the front beds and up the hillside. Apart from on the hillside, the system used double-walled perforated piping rather than individual drippers and was controlled automatically by a 4-programme, 12-circuit timer. Unfortunately the system relied on the water pressure created by having the water cistern at the top of the hill so the watering pipes on the hill which were supposed to irrigate the newly planted trees never delivered sufficient water. In addition, within a few years the hard water from the well started to fur up many of the perforations in the pipes and sections of the beds were left dry.

By then, however, the whole philosophy of mediterranean gardening was changing and we were at last accepting the fact that daily and even weekly watering had to be reserved for pots and vegetables in the former case and for a small proportion of the plants in our gardens in the latter. Heidi Gildemeister’s waterwise approach was leading the way. Sally therefore declined offers to renew the system, preferring to make do with a combination of systems, part old, part new, with sprays and drippers; eventually the entire garden was watered by hand as described in July 2008, while the volume of irrigation water used was reduced. By 2008 it was down to 73 cubic metres. Now was the time to strike a balance between water consumption and plant variety. The number of deaths occurring showed clearly that many mediterranean plants could not survive without help in the harsh conditions of Sparoza, so in 2009 Sally returned to an irrigation system more finely tuned this time to the plants and controlled by her rather than by an automatic timer so that each circuit could be given the water needed. Now at the end of August the plants do not have the lush appearance achieved by abundant watering, they are hardened and quiet but surviving to come awake again in the October “spring”.

A close up of the cement watering channel, long since disused,
taken in September when the Haemanthus coccineus is just appearing.

Plumbago auriculata flowers profusely with a little irrigation.

At the end of August the Amaryllis belladonna suddenly opens.
It has been bone dry all summer.

Photographs by Davina Michaelides

MAY 2009

In most of Greece May made little pretence of being part of spring this year. The earlier cool, wet weather had provided us with an abundance of wildflowers for our May Day wreaths but almost immediately the temperature rose into the 30s and summer had arrived. Sally recorded a few drops of rain at Sparoza on 6th May but from then on the phrygana quickly turned from green to brown and by the second half of the month it was time for mowing. Many people regret the passing of the scythe — in skilled hands the grass could be cut quite quickly with a graceful swish. Now anyone with strength enough can get out the motor strimmer and amidst much noise and dust another unpleasant job is done. Young Antoine Quelen, on placement from the landscape architecture college at Blois (ENSNP), was “volunteered” for the task this time. The volunteers themselves took on the weeding of the gravel path which runs through the triangular section of phrygana below the house, so that by the end of the month the whole area had taken on its tidy summer appearance.

In the beds the self-sown annuals bloomed their last and were then fed to the compost pit. Sally spread seeds from the larkspurs and delphiniums into the phrygana but knows that their performance there will be quite different from that in the garden proper — their growth stunted and their flowers short-lived. Late spring flowers of phlomis, salvias, echium, wallflowers, rose and lampranthus kept the garden looking gay despite the gaps where the annuals had been. How to deal with the gaps left after the annuals have finished is one of the challenges of a mediterranean garden. Here at Sparoza an area shaded by trees where the larkspurs seed and grow is planted thickly with autumn bulbs, Zephyranthes candida and Belladonna lilies (Amaryllis belladonna). Sally has also tried agapanthus as a filler but finds that in full sun its leaves are bleached to an unappetizing grey colour. Other solutions are lacking at the moment apart from actually using the gaps as part of the design of the summer garden.

There was a happy surprise in the nursery when Sally spied an unusual looking ‘weed’ growing in the gravel. It turned out to be a seedling of a Mexican annual brought to the nursery some time ago but subsequently lost. With thistle-like leaves and oenothera-like flowers it is a strange little plant called Argemone ochroleuca.

Students from the ENSNP at Blois,
Antoine Quelen and Joséphine Pinatel.

The volunteers at work weeding the gravel path.

Consolida spp and Papaver rhoeas in the shady part of the garden to be
followed later by Zephyranthes candida and Amaryllis belladonna.

These poppies are not growing in a bed but in a paved area where the
stone flags sit in soil. It will revert to a sitting area at the end of the month.

Echium piniana growing in a pleasing contrast
with the trunk of an Ailanthus altissima. This
tree, often despised for its invasive disposition,
is used very effectively at Sparoza.

Self-seeded Argemone ochroleuca.

Photographs by Davina Michaelides

APRIL 2009

Many years ago when we were planning an MGS exhibition in Greece, the President, Katherine Greenberg, suggested the title Out of the Wild and Into the Garden. Those plans never bore fruit, but in fact there is an exhibition that could go by that name every April at the MGS garden at Sparoza. The hillside phrygana is the ultimate wild garden − flowering fit to burst; green shoots covering every shrub; a feast for the eyes, nose and emotions.

Of course this is a garden. All the trees have been planted by Jacky Tyrwhitt or Sally, as we can tell from the old photos of a stripped, bare landscape. The Pistachio lentiscus have been clipped and the phlomis dead-headed while the oat grasses are constantly pulled up before they seed and the grass cut as soon as it dries up. And of course Sally constantly adds plants here and there, trying them out for appearance and suitability. Some take to the phrygana conditions without complaint − the bearded irises for example. Others may survive as long as they have the help of the introductory watering but then fade away. Sally doesn’t insist by replanting the same plant and changing the care regime. The majority of the new plants have been propagated in the nursery so she knows that the failure will not have been due to bad root development but to lack of resistance to the harsh conditions. She notes the result and moves on to try something else, letting nature be her guide.

As I was buying some potting soil from my local nurseryman this month I noticed that he was loading up lawn turfs. I looked at him askance and could not stop myself remonstrating. He shrugged his shoulders and replied simply: "Some people have money and think they are God". Well, the Sparoza garden is run on a shoestring and Sally regards herself as a servant rather than a god, or rather as a custodian of the beauty of spring.

Some of the spring treasures in close-up:

Campanula drabifolia

Lomelosia brachiata (syn Scabiosa brachiata)

Crupina crupinastrum

The Ornithogalum arabicum has seeded itself all around the garden –
and paths – so Sally is encouraging it to move on to the hillside.

April is the month when we remember the crucifixion, yet it is the Judas tree
(Cercis siliquastrum) which brightens the countryside. This specimen in the
garden has attractive purple seed pods from summer to autumn.

JANUARY 2009

A good beginning to the gardening year as the rains continued and the weather stayed cold but above freezing. Although in terms of millimetres (75.5) the amount of rain has not been as much as in some previous years, the kind of weather has been ideal − the rainfall has been steady and regular with few storms heavy enough to cause the water to run off unabsorbed. Even on dry days the skies have been cloudy and the atmosphere so heavy that transpiration has been limited. Not great for the rheumatism but the ground has stayed soft and damp − comforting for the plants which were suffering by the end of the long summer drought.

On the hillside the anemones are back; they're at least a month late and, as Sally remarks, rather stunted in the length of flower stalk, but just as many as ever. It's a relief. Another happy piece of news is that the Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis) are almost free of caterpillar nests this year. They were thoroughly cleaned by the garden assistant, Jane Shaw, last year and the effect is notable. Down in the village, trees which were obviously neglected are covered in nests and the processional caterpillars (Pytiocamba) will be on the march soon enough.

The terraces at Sparoza are always changing as Sally removes some plants which have outgrown their position and divides and thins out others. Dead subjects are replaced and a whole terrace gets a new look. This year the bed surrounding the 'threshing floor' suffered a number of drought casualties, including the large Ptilostemon chamaepeuce pictured in the June 2008 diary entry and visible as a dead mass in background of the December 2008 photograph of Agave americana 'Marginata'. The ground has now been cleared and the new residents are waiting to take their places.

We won't mention the Oxalis pes-caprae − the bane of the volunteers' lives − but end on the sweetly-scented Cyclamen persicum which is now at its best. The original plant which has been a feature of the garden for many years has been joined by two others, brought from England by Jennie Gay and planted up close to the trunks of a pruned olive − a combination so natural and satisfying that one longs to replicate it.

The anemones are back, here growing on the hillside path
which is edged with the trunks of long-dead pines.

Healthy Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis).

The volunteers clearing away the dead wood round the
'threshing floor'. Photograph by Maria Paraskeviades.

Sally Razelou in her best working clothes weeding outside
the gardener's annexe. Photograph by Christa Vayanos.

Dull days have meant less transpiration. Meanwhile the
Oxalis pes-caprae crowds out any natural vegetation.

Cyclamen persicum planted under an olive.

As long as the temperature is not below freezing for a prolonged period,
the faithful variegated abutilon flowers on all winter.

DECEMBER 2008

Where are the anemones?

The last month of the year brought plenty of rain and frequent warnings of frost and snow although the latter fortunately did not affect the Sparoza garden. Sally was able to continue work, planting out using plants propagated in the nursery. As the autumn-flowering Cyclamen hederifolium faded away the Paperwhites (Narcissus papyraceus), first introduced into the garden by Jacky Tyrwhitt and since planted throughout the phrygana by Sally, began their pure white display and their heavy perfuming of the air. The bulbs multiply so readily that in any garden a few will soon become a mass.

But what about the anemones? Anemone coronaria has always been one of the glories of the hillside, blooming in the depths of winter in a profusion of colour, yet this December they are marked by their absence. I consulted Making a Garden on a Greek Hillside to check Jacky Tyrwhitt's experience only to find that she too describes them as a glory which started blooming in December and continued until at least February.

One of my embarrassing memories from living at Sparoza as a young woman was running out to remonstrate with a group of village women who were gathering anemones by the armful. Only later did I learn that this was an established custom in the countryside that no pesky foreigner − not even the respected Jaqueline Tyrwhitt − could influence.

Sparoza is no longer part of the countryside nor would the ladies of Peania thank you for calling them village women (horiatisses), yet the strange urge to cut huge quantities of wildflowers can still be observed in Greece − primroses, poppies and orchids cut by the dozen and then left to wilt and die in the car. Profusion breeds complacency but if the anemones can disappear from the protected environment of Sparoza the omens are not good. We wait impatiently to see if it is just that their flowering is very late this year due to the lack of rain in the earlier part of autumn, hoping that the anemones will show themselves in January.

If only our computers could transmit the wonderful perfume
of Narcissus papyraceus.

A large Iris unguicularis was divided during the propagations
workshops held at the 2007 AGM Symposium and the smaller
plants have not yet got back into their full flowering swing.

This cultivar of Teucrium fruticans has particularly striking dark
blue flowers: another plant to brighten the winter.

A pot of Sedum kamtschaticum is a classic sight
in Greek courtyard gardens. It is a wonderfully tough
plant that can survive long periods of drought in its
pot without looking too miserable.

The variegated Agave americana 'Marginata' makes an interesting
backdrop in this dry bed throughout the year.

Photos by Davina Michaelides

SEPTEMBER 2008

September came in this year as it should, with days of soft, penetrating rain. Sally excitedly recorded the millimeters on her chart as the garden broke into its ‘second spring’. Imperceptibly the plants started to look more alive and then colour reasserted itself as blooms reappeared –Sternbergia lutea, Zephyranthus, Amaryllis belladona, Tulbaghia violacea and Cyclamen graeca among the bulbs, and roses, bougainvillea, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, Pavonia hastata and Liriope muscari among the herbaceous plants. Only those plants whose survival is in the balance will need a little longer to show signs of life. Suddenly in a terrace bed we can seethe exotic Haemanthus coccineus – deep scarlet flowers coming and going before the huge rounded leaves emerge.

As the month proceeds seedlings of Cerinthe retorta and Delphinium staphisagria start to appear en masse, to be thinned and left only where they can grow unfettered. Unfortunately an unwelcome guest also returns. In the lists of harmful invasive plants (some of which are mentioned in TMG 54), South African Oxalis pes-caprae does not rank very high since farmers are not much bothered by it, but it is one of our greatest garden pests. Forty years ago Jacky Tyrwhitt was relaxed about letting it spread in her garden at Sparoza because she enjoyed the yellow flowers in spring and Sally has been battling against it ever since. The effects can be unexpected. In an attempt not to recycle it through the garden, the pulled oxalis along with other weedings from affected beds is gathered for the rubbish rather than the compost heap. This means that the compost mix is short of soft waste matter and the natural breakdown of the hard wood prunings etc is retarded. Without a male garden assistant (or indeed any garden assistant) this year to introduce a little ‘activator’ into the compost heap (see Compost-making at Sparoza TMG 39), piles of unrotted waste accumulate. “Perhaps the neighbours would give us their grass mowings” was the heretical suggestion of one of the volunteers. For yes indeed, the Sparoza hill is now dotted with villas sporting gardens which grow in defiance of the natural setting – the olives, orchids and stones having been replaced by leylandii cypress, lawns and pools.

The shy Liriope muscari is one of the first plants
to flower after the rains.

Haemanthus coccineus from South Africa – a totally hardy
exotic in the terrace.

Will this artemisia revive?

An unusual white Thevetia peruviana in a pot to the south of the house
has been blooming all summer long.

Photos by Davina Michaelides

JULY 2008

Dead or Alive

As the summer progresses we are grateful in Attica for a cooling breeze which keeps the temperature below heatwave levels, but the air carries no moisture and the thirsty plants are obliged to put up their drought-stress defences. By July in Sparoza the phrygana has gone into summer dormancy – the medics (Medicago arborea), tree germanders (Teucrium fruticans), Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, helichrysums and cistus are in their natural desiccated state. They look as if they are dead or dying but in fact they are surviving - though they differ from their sisters in the wild in being neatly dead-headed and clipped into shape. Fortunately there are other plants for which their dormant state does not mean loss of colour: on the hillside the cypress, lentisks (Pistacia lentiscus), Cneorum tricoccon, Rhamnus alaternus and of course the pines set off the spiky dryness of the desiccated greys. Yet Sally is always vigilant.

Having ditched the inefficient automatic watering system which we had been planning to renovate this year, Sally is experimenting with ‘emergency room’ watering all done by hose and hand. Plants regarded as totally drought-tolerant are nevertheless watched for signs of over-stress. Some rhamnus, spiraea and even lentisks and a small Arbutus unedo, after two statistically dry winters, have shown signs of succumbing to stress and have been given emergency water rations to save them. Meanwhile less drought-tolerant plants, mostly in the terraces, are given deep watering (that is, as far as you can call it deep when the underlying rock is so close to the surface) every so often. But throughout the garden there is a feeling of stillness - no lush growth, no fresh green weeds nor any abundance of flowers. In fact at this time of year bright colour is mostly confined to the pot plants in the true Greek manner. Alas, Sally no longer uses feta tins but I somehow feel we should find some for her to give her entrance a true national flavour.

A clipped medic next to a green Pistacia lentiscus with a dormant
Euphorbia acanthothamnos in the background which shapes itself naturally into a cushion.

The Cneorum tricoccon is reliably green in the summer. Beside it towards
the back a Convolvulus cneorum looking good but with the help of regular water.

One of the few flowering plants, Plumbago capensis, plus visitor.

Not all the plants are dead-headed. Here the Ptilostemon chamaepeuce looks
handsome with its dried flowers, as does the Cotyledon orbiculata

Sally’s daily task.

MAY 2008

April and May are the months when Sparoza is home to students on placement from the French Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Nature et du Paysage of Blois. Due to the relative isolation of Sparoza for those without personal transport, Sally Razelou generously offers places to two students so that they have company.

The students are normally young and inexperienced but under Sally’s close guidance they learn the practice of mediterranean gardening and are helped to identify the plants both in the garden terraces and growing wild on the hillside. Sally also takes them ‘botanising’, usually near the archaeological sites around Athens. Being almost invariably artistic, the students produce reports for the college which are beautifully illustrated by their line drawings and watercolours. And of course they take some excellent photographs, a few of which appear here.
The two months see a valuable exchange – the garden has extra hands during the busy spring period and the students absorb knowledge about the demands of a mediterranean garden and the way it can be designed to incorporate the natural landscape alongside beds and terraces.

After the prolonged spring the heat arrived suddenly as it always does and the spring flowers immediately ran to seed. By the end of May the dry vegetation in the phrygana had been cut and the estate was taking on its summer feel. Formerly Sally preferred to hand-pull the dry grasses to protect the wildlife – in particular the ladybirds. However this labour of love became too labour-intensive and the grass is now cut using a petrol-motored strimmer. The garden is an example of the theory set out by Cali Doxiadis in A Summer Dilemma, TMG no 50. To counteract the lack of colour and excitement in the summer garden Sally keeps it scrupulously maintained: all the gravel paths are weed-free, the bushes are neatly pruned, the flowers dead-headed and the plant rubbish cleared up. It helps of course to have the weekly attendance of the volunteers who are willing to unwind and chat whilst performing these repetitive tasks.

Photos of 2007 by Marie Gallienne and Eloyse Descurninges

Marie and Eloyse.

View up the hill on 12th April 2007 taken by Eloyse.

Erysimum “Bowles’ Mauve’ taken by Eloyse. Sally makes them flower a second time
by removing the flowers just as they start to fade. They make a wonderful flower
arrangement in a low pot.

The flower of Euphorbia acanthothamnus taken by Marie.

The flower of the pomegranate taken by Marie.

Photos of 2008 Yannick Campion and Elodie Petra

Poppies seeded into the gravel paths, 9th May 2008.

This amazing yucca is home to tens of nesting small sparrow-like birds
called sparos in the local Albanian language.

The upper terrace in its lush spring verdancy on 18th April 2008.

APRIL 2008

Styrax officinalis

A large deciduous shrub native to Italy, Greece, Turkey and California with sweet-scented white flowers which open in late spring. This makes an attractive garden plant though I have never seen it in a nursery. If properly grown it needs no summer irrigation. Despite its size it should be planted where the light fragrance will drift across a path rather that at the distant back of a bed. In the MGS garden it grows next to the lower road.

Botanically, it is interesting. The bark gives a resin which has been used for medicinal purposes. Arthur Gibson notes: " Uses of natural products from bark of Styrax date back at least to the Sumerians, who incorporated the terpenoid resin storax into a variety of medicinal preparations, such as liniments and ointments, applied to sores, aches, and infections. Some accounts say that the inner bark was crushed, and then hot water was used to extracted the terpenoids, whereas others mention boiling the bark and skimming the insoluble resin scum before pressing the inner bark for more extract. From that storax is refined into an opaque liquid having the viscosity of honey and the fragrance of balsam."

This was known in ancient Greece where Theophrastus gave the plant the name Styrax which has remained unaltered ever since. In the 1750s, Linnaeus described Styrax officinalis known to him from the wild in Southern Europe. It turned out to be also a native shrub of Southern California, Styrax officinalis L. var. redivivus (Torrey).

Arthur Gibson again: "Three decades ago there was extensive discussion about intercontinental disjunctions. Certain genera and a handful of species have very large discontinuities in their range, some having gaps of ten to twenty thousand kilometers. Styrax officinalis is one of those, being at approximately the same latitude but nine time zones away: California to Italy. This has been termed by Dr. Thorne (in 1972) as the Mediterranean-American disjunction. How and when the populations of this species became so separated is still a matter of speculation, because there are other plants of the Mediterranean region that have very closely related species in California. Other species of Styrax also occur in North America; for example, there are four native species in the flora of Texas, and the many of species in the genus are native to eastern Asia. The only reasonable conclusion is that this genus was once widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere and became restricted to certain smaller zone."

Fleur Pavlidis

1 ARTHUR C. GIBSON, MEMBG Director, Newsletter Spring 2002Volume 5(2), Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden UCLA

FEBRUARY 2008

After several weeks of mostly bleak winter weather, the meteorological office forecast snow for the south of Greece – snow which would settle.

Right on time the storm came and for three days the garden was covered with up to 30 cm of snow. Sally and her assistant Jane had prepared for it by covering many of the less hardy plants with fleece, and when the snow thawed it appeared that not much damage had been done. Yet as the days passed more and more parts of the affected plants turned brown and by the end of the week many were looking very burnt, though probably not dead.

The worst affected were: Duranta erecta, Homolocladium platycladum, Clerodendrum floribundum, Leonotis leonurus, Pavonia hastata, Carissa macrocarpa, Eriocephalus africanus, Tecomaria capensis, Salvia discolor, Echium candicans, Myoporum laetum, Crocosmia, Clivia and Ornithogalum nutans.

The Melianthus major which had made such a show in 2007 lost its large leaves but the flower buds were unharmed.

While the terraces were left looking generally rather sad, the wild flowers took precedence and the hillside burst into colour with anemones, Muscari commutatum, Cerinthe retorta, Silene and numerous white and yellow daisies and marigolds. Hermodactylus tuberosus (the Widow Iris) appeared in the paths where it has self-seeded profusely and a collected specimen of Fritillaria obliqua in one of the beds is now proudly in bud.

Snow on the terraces.
Jane Shaw

It took several days for the Crocosmia leaves and flowers to turn completely brown.
Jane Shaw

The Salvia discolor, in flower just before the snow, may not have survived despite being covered.
Jane Shaw

Muscari commutatum with its characteristic two-toned flowers.
Davina Michaelides

Hermodactylus tuberosus has spread from the hillside into the garden.
Davina Michaelides

Although locally abundant in the wild, Fritillaria obliqua is hard to grow as a garden plant.
Davina Michaelides

The sweet pink of this Helleborus orientalis caught the photographer’s eye.
Davina Michaelides

JANUARY 2008

A few notes on how bulbs at Sparoza have responded to the climate conditions of 2007.

Probably as a result of a period of drought in the early months of the year, none of the spring crocuses flowered in 2007, nor did Tulipa saxatilis. After an exceptionally hot, dry summer, the autumn Crocus goulimyi flowered as usual. Sternbergia lutea and Narcissus serotinus flowered normally in the autumn. However, Amaryllis belladonna was clearly unhappy with the summer heat and drought, and produced not a single bloom in autumn 2007 – a striking difference from its usual profuse flowering in the phrygana area to the south of the main garden. Now in January it has clumps of lush foliage. In contrast, Narcissus papyraceus responded very well to its summer baking and is flowering better than ever before all over the garden and the hillside. On the hillside Arisarum vulgare and Anemone coronaria are also profuse.

We have been planting a drift of new rosemaries in the phrygana area. All the rosemaries are covered in flowers, including those planted by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt when the garden was first created in the 1960s.
Sally Razelou

Clumps of lush foliage of Amaryllis belladonna,
unfortunately surrounded by Oxalis pes-caprae
an invasive weed from South Africa.

Narcissus papyraceus – Paperwhites - flowering
better than ever before all over the garden.

Arisarum vulgare on the hillside.

An old rosemary covered in flowers.

The January morning sun.

Photographs by Davina Michaelides

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The shy Liriope muscari is one of the first plants to flower after the rains.

A clipped medic next to a green Pistacia lentiscus with a dormant Euphorbia acanthothamnos in the background which shapes itself naturally into a cushion.

Marie and Eloyse.

Styrax officinalis

The
Mediterranean Garden Society

The shy Liriope muscari is one of the first plants
to flower after the rains.

A clipped medic next to a green Pistacia lentiscus with a dormant
Euphorbia acanthothamnos in the background which shapes itself naturally into a cushion.