Petrovska

Two contrasting climates this month as we experienced horrible heat in the early part of July in Croatia which was so bad even local friends found it difficult . The gardens really suffer there in the extreme heat which looks like lasting for over six weeks and plants just hunker down miserable looking and a lot of plants won’t recover at all … luckily over the past six years I have modified my planting in Croatia due to climate change and the increasingly higher temperatures .

I have been a frequent visitor to the Croatian coast for almost thirty years and time was you would get perhaps three weeks together maximum of extreme heat over the entire summer but these periods are now up to six weeks at a time and as I said I have adapted  and only the strongest heat and drought resistant specimens are planted .

A reliable though is lavender and it comes through even the longest periods of heat and drought and looks good … knarly looking but  good !

I grow lavender both in Ireland and in Croatia and while in Ireland with it’s damp climate lavender is a short lived shrub but in Croatia it can last twenty years as the heat and the stony terrain really suits it .

I was pruning the Croatian lavender in mid July , not the cosmetic delicate pruning from Ireland but here a brutal hacking back leaving a fairly shook looking bush that will quickly put on new growth .

This is how I described lavender pruning in July 2023

Lavender growing in Ireland and the UK gardens is a very genteel affair when conditions are right with great plumes of blue spires and nice soft downy leaves over perfect domes of foliage  but the downside is that the plants are short lived , four or five years at best before the wet rain we have gets them and they pop their clogs .

Lavender in the Mediterranean / Adriatic is a very different affair as basically the plants struggle for life from day one in the brutal heat of the summer months but they do last almost forever and even young plants develop a knarly woody ancient mariner look which always remind me of ancient japanese bonsai trees where the trunks have great character… neat and pretty they aren’t out of flower and you have to treat them mean by hacking them back after flowering and I find even old wood will grow leaves again .

I visited a lavender farm in Croatia in July on the slopes of Biokovo Mountain overlooking the islands of Brac and Hvar , an idyllic sloping location with perfect growing conditions . It is a young plantation , five or six years old but already the lavender bushes look ancient and had been planted in long rows for easy harvesting and as they had been just machine pruned commercially , not a pretty sight as the bushes looked hacked … by September when they have recovered and put on some top growth the bushes will look better .

Commercial growing of anything is a business and the aesthetics take second place to a crop … lavender farms are no different and there definitely is no room for pampering like we would do in our private gardens  . These lavender bushs were tough and tough , exposed on a hillside to merciless sun all day and harsh winds in the Winter months then whacked with a cropping machine in July almost scalped but will come back in full growth in a  month or two .

Compared to their Mediterranean cousins the Irish and UK lavender are primped and pampered  like top models and are just as tempremental !

The perfect climate… Ireland in July … 22 deg in Clonmel !

As I said I like lavender but apart from one or two plants I don’t think I would plant it again in the Gornja Podgora Adriatic garden as they take up a lot of space and unless pruned carefully they sprawl and don’t look great … in future I would plant young plants as fillers and then remove entirely when the other planting thickens out … sacrilige I know as Adriatic gardens are known for lavender but here it is a small 400 square metre area and there is no room for a mass planting of lavender which the plant needs and deserves .

Right plant right place is a famous gardening mantra and one we all try to follow but sometimes the plant likes the place so much that it outgrows and dominates the area and such was the case for me with a pittosporum I planted as one of the first choices in the original small garden in Gornja Podgora  twenty years ago .

The pittosporum never stopped growing and topped out at over four metres high and three metres wide , a solid block of leaf from top to bottom totally dwarfing and out of proportion to the small garden .

I knew sooner or later it needed to be either hard pruned to two metres or removed entirely neither of which I could bring myself to do so it drifted along for the past five years but last week looking at the tree the solution came to me … cloud prune it to five or six strong branches and take out all the lower branches and it has now transformed the small area letting light in and giving a Japanese look to that area … delighted !!

I know I bitch about the searing heat of the Adriatic Coast in July but there is a beauty about the hard stony soil in the garden at Gornja Podgora that is uniquely Adriatic .

The sunsets on the Dalmatian coast are sensational … better than Santorini !

The No – Mow lawn debate has been going on for the past few years and one of it’s biggest supporters was Monty Don , presenter of Gardener’s World on BBC 2 and now even Co. Councils are getting into the act and letting grass verges grow long to the degree that you don’t know is it just untidiness or deliberate policy to let grass go wild .

I have never been a fan and have always thought it was just for lazy gardeners who can’t be bothered to get the mower out on a regular basis and who then pretend they are letting the grass grow wild for the planet .

I do see a place for wild gardening in certain areas and with paths cut through it can look really good and we have done it here in a few areas in the garden at Old Spa Road but always under control … mind you we don’t get many wild flowers in the long grass as the soil is damp and too lush .

This week however in a lead article in the London Telegraph Monty Don has decided to cut his lawns again admitting that this highlights the planting and makes smaller areas look bigger … it will be interesting to see if this is the start of a new movement away from rewilding now that Monty has spoken !

Shirley Lannigan , the Irish Gardening writer , has reissued and in most part rewritten her book The Open Gardens of Ireland first published seven years ago and invited us to the Dublin and Kilkenny launch in early June . Shirley had asked if we would allow our garden to be included again in the new edition and visited us here last year and walked the garden to see what we had done in recent years and in her opening remarks in the new book on Petrovska Garden she wrote “ I always thought of it as a wild garden but when I visited recently Snezana Petrovska said “basically it’s become wilder ” .

It has , it has Snezana , a wild garden has got wilder !

I worked with Aleksandra Radjenovic in Bosnia twenty two years ago when I was stationed in Brcko with the EU until Aleks emigrated to Canada in 2002 … we kept in contact over the years and last month Aleks visited Ireland with her family and we gave them a tour of the garden during their visit here .

Aleks was a Serb from Vukovar and married her childhood sweetheart , Dejan , a Croat from Osijk . Barbaric things happened during the war in Croatia but their relationship thrived despite both being from opposite sides and it was not easy for either of them but Canada offered a safe haven to build a new life with their two daughters , Emilija and Nathalie and it was a pleasure to see them .

Twenty two years , where did the time  go  … friendship endures but as I wrote after their visit “ apart from the colour of my hair not a lot has changed Aleks … and the odd pain here and there … shortness of breath now and then … frequency to pee … otherwise we were back in old times in Brcko today !”.

A shrub I love is the castor oil plant , fatsia japonica , which is usually sold as an indoor plant but which does well outdoors in Ireland and we have several specimens that are almost two metres tall . Originally from Japan and Korea woodland areas it has a beautiful architectural shape , large evergreen leaves but you need to be careful where it is sited as it can be tender enough and I find that a sheltered shady dry location  deep among mature trees and shrubs suits best … extreme frost can burn off a few top leaves but if you keep it out of wind the castor oil plant is a stunner throughout the year and brings a whiff of exoticism to the garden .

When buying a castor oil plant in the garden centres make sure to pick one that is displayed outdoors and not one from their indoor section as it will survive better in it’s first few months outdoors in the garden … there is a variegated version also sold with speckled white leaves which looks nice but is not hardy outdoors .

Hydrangeas come into their own in July and the two most popular are Annabelle and Limelight and because of their popularity they are expensive costing upwards of forty euros each and the garden centres are full of them right now as they are in flower and look great .

I grow Limelight and a few mop head old fashioned hydrangeas but am not a fan of Annabelle as while the flower head is huge and impressive looking , it flops over very easily especially in our rainy climate . Limelight is a paniculata variety which refers to the tufted flower head and is easy to grow even for me as I don’t seem to have the knack with hydrangeas and it will romp away in a dry area … I do everything I can to supply what hydrangeas need , shade , not too dry but apart from a few specimens  that have found their choice spot I just can’t seem to grow them … and don’t talk to me about taking slips of hydrangeas as I have no luck at all in that department .. I potted up twelve cuttings last October and not one of them took whereas a friend , Margaret Rea , just looks at a hydrangea cutting and they grow for her !

Colour in the garden in July