Re: Plants for a Garden in southern Portugal.

Cistus ladanifer is covering the Serra's in the Algarve, but they only grow
in the very poor acid soil of the mountains. The locals used to cut this
cistus for firewood for their traditional breadovens A large portion of the
coastal part,  of the Algarve (where the foreigners have there houses) is
alkaline soil. Here one find Cistus albicans in abundance. Cistus purpurea
is also here very common in the alkaline area's.
Wim van Putten,Quelfes, Algarve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Schweich" <tom@schweich.com>
To: <a_m_leonardo@hotmail.com>; "Medit-Plants" <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: Plants for a Garden in southern Portugal.


> One of the "surprises" recently while traveling between Huelva and Rio
> Tinto was an understory composed entirely of what I believe was /Cistus
> ladanifer/ L. In the US I've used /Cistus purpurea/ as an anchor shrub,
> never planting more than one, but it never occurred to me that it could
> be a  dominant understory shrub.  I have a photograph of one of them:
>
> http://www.schweich.com/imagehtml/ST1038-R2-12.html
>
> I don't think this would be a very pretty plant in the foreground, but
> they would be pretty filling in around the edges or under open trees.
>
> I also saw some very pretty Rosemary in the hills between Almaden and
> Siruela in Extremadura.
>
> Alexandre Leonardo wrote:
>
> > I`ve just recently bought my first house with a garden and I'm hopping
> > to transform those 4000m3 of dry land into a nice garden.
> >
> > I live in southern Portugal where the winters are mild and the summers
> > very hot and dry. My ideia is to make a garden with plants that don't
> > need much watering or maintenace since I don't have much time
> > available. Therefore I'm trying to create a list of plants that could
> > grow well in my climate with litle maintenance. I wonder if any of you
> > could help me or if any of you has experience with gardening on south
> > of Portugal .
> >
> -
> Tom Schweich   tom@schweich.com
> http://www.schweich.com
>
>
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