Re: Hello all!

"Francisco J. de la Mota" wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone. I am new to this Mediterranean garden discussion group. I live
> in Madrid, Spain. We have a xeriscaping family business
> http://www.xerijardin.com (in Spanish) in which we try to follow, as much as
> we can, the principles of water, soil and native vegetation conservation,
> but we are not closed to the use of exotics.
> 
> My yard is located in the mountains North from Madrid (40º 50' N, 3º 50' W).....

Hi Fran
Welcome to the list. I think you will find it both friendly and lively.
I don't suppose you know, but Wellington New Zealand (in whose general
district lies the valley where I live) is the exact antipodes of Madrid!
We are, however, right at sea level on an ocean island instead of on a
plateau on  a large continent, so our climate is both cooler in summer
and much warmer in winter than yours. We can for instance grow both figs
and cherry laurel without any effort at all and they do not suffer in
the least from the frost. In fact the Cherry Laurel is so easy it is
pretty good at becoming a weed! Unfortunatly the cold is not enough to
keep Buddlea davidii under control and it has become a proscribed weed
of our natural areas readily displacing native flora.

Wind is one of our major preoccpations here too. It seems inevitable if
one lives at these latitudes. Some years ar worse for us than others.
This is one of the bad ones with spring gales stretching on into summer,
when they do a lot of damage to tender young growth.

It was of great interest to read of your garden and what you grow. One
tree which did surprise me was Loquat as I would havethought this would
be too tender for your winters, but evidently it is tougher than I
thought.

Our rainfall is also, like yours, variable, falling mostly in winter but
definitely much higher - at least twice as high an in our valley among
the hills and even higher than that some years. Xeriscaping is not my 
particualr preoocupation, though certainly we must practise water
thriftiness in summer. Down on the coastline though xerophytes can be
very useful with the exposure.

We hope you will become an active member of the list, sharing some of
your professional experience  and so increase the interest for all of
us.

Best wishes

Moira

-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
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