Article by Cath
Moving abroad is a time of change. You change your language, your culture, your food, your social circle and just about everything else. And with your new home comes the challenge of a new garden. There’s no point in trying to transplant your Northern European garden habits and ideals to a Mediterranean climate. Instead you should embrace the new opportunities being presented to you.
Why spend all your time, effort and valuable water resources on a large lawn, or on plants that need a moist, shady aspect? Now you can grow stately palms or architectural agaves. Maybe you fancy growing olives or citrus? Maybe, like me, you are a fan of succulent plants in all their infinite variety. Or using all those ‘hot’ colours that can look so out of place in dear old Blighty.
Look around at your neighbours gardens, especially the Portuguese, who have generations of gardening knowledge to fall back on. They have the experience of what grows well in your area, as well as an intimate knowledge of the weather, the soil and any locally prevailing conditions, and will be more than happy, in most cases, to chat away and pass that knowledge on to you.
You may be lucky and move to a virtually frost-free, subtropical Paradise, but the chances are that your new garden will have unforeseen problems of some kind. You may be battered by salt-laden gales near the coast, desiccating your plants. Or you might find yourself in a frost pocket, especially in valley floors where cold air moves downhill, but cannot escape once it reaches the bottom. Or you may find your self in a fire zone.
Out of all the problems you may encounter, this is the most serious. And your garden is your first, and possibly the last, line of defence.
After a fireYou may remember the firestorms in Central and Northern Portugal last summer, and you may be looking for advice or ideas to make your home and garden safer. Even if you are a long term resident, there is always something more you can do to make things safer, especially as the weather heats up and summer approaches. For this reason, I recommend that everyone who lives in a fire zone gets a copy of “Gardening with Fire: the essential self- help manual for Home and Garden design in areas at risk of fire” – not as a cheap plug for my endeavours, but in order to understand better the complexity of the role of fire within the ecology of the region, and for the extensive advice that could save your home, your garden and even your life in an emergency!
However, in this small article, I will try to outline some practical tips for you. Lets start at the edge of your land or garden:
If you have a very large garden, or a farm or smallholding, you may think about having a firebreak cleared around your land. If you call in a bulldozer to clear a conventional firebreak, always remember the following:
Have the debris ploughed in or removed.
A cleared firebreak must be renewed every year to be effective. If this is neglected, the break can become dangerous within one season, as grasses, thistles and other flammable plants can take hold.
Clear your firebreak in late spring or early summer. There is no point in clearing over the autumn, winter or spring, as plants will grow back during the rainy months and all your hard work will be to no avail!
bullet Bulldozed fire breaks can lead to erosion on steep hills, although the chance of this is less if native plants take hold in the wet months, to be cleared again once the rains stop.
Future fuel for a fire
Try to make sure you have no trees that touch those in surrounding vegetation if you live near forested or overgrown land. If you do, try to reduce their fuel load by removing their lower branches and cutting out any dead or decaying wood. The spacing of trees and shrubs can be crucial in determining the spread of fire. Canopy fires, when flames have spread into the trees themselves, as opposed to surface fires along the ground, are difficult to control and highly dangerous due to the large fuel loads available, and the fact that the opportunity then exists for burning debris to be sent high into the air to spread secondary fires over a wider area.
Your firebreak should at least be as wide as the height of the surrounding vegetation.
With the edges of your land being safer, you can concentrate on other features that will lessen your risks within your garden. Let’s start with a rather wonderful little term I picked up from somewhere: FINGER FUELS!
This basically translates as clearing your garden of any dead, or dying, dry fuels that are as wide as your finger, or smaller. This means that those of you with big hands will have more clearing up to do! All fires need fuel to sustain them, and these small dry twigs, sticks and grasses are amongst the easiest to ignite. By keeping your garden clear of these you will be greatly lessening your risk of a spark landing on something very flammable, or a surface fire spreading along the ground.
Do you have climber growing up your house, or tall trees nearby? These issues are dealt with more comprehensively in the CD-Rom, but in a nutshell: keep all climbers, if you must grow them against your house, away from your roof, and from the area immediately around your doors and windows.
Trees
Trees are a more complicated issue. How you deal with making them safer depends on a number of factors:
What type of tree is it? Some trees are very much more flammable than others. The most flammable trees in Portugal are generally eucalypts or pines and other conifers.
How near to your house is the tree in question? If it is less than its height away from your home, then you should, at least, look at some general maintenance. You could try thinning the crown to let in more light and air.
You should remove all branches to a distance of 2 metres from the ground.
Maybe your tree is of a type that would respond to coppicing, which means that a tall tree is cut back and new shoots grow from the base. These are then easier to control and maintain.
Keep the area under, and around the tree clear. Mulching with gravel, or growing a carpeting succulent plant beneath the tree can keep the cleared area looking neat as well as being safe.
These are just a handful of things that can make a difference. All aspects of home and garden design, including lists of suitable plants, ecology and habitat management, plus advice for emergencies, are all included in the CD:
Gardening with Fire: the essential self-help manual for Home and Garden design in areas at risk of fire
