Types of Cyprus Garden Designs

If the customer is living in Cyprus full time and likes gardening, Loukia will design a high maintenance garden for the owner. This is not normally the case, as 70% of customers still live in the UK and only travel to Cyprus for a few weeks each year but maybe rent the property. In this case the customer wants to have a very low maintenance garden using special techniques, i.e. low maintenance plants, membrane and gravel so that the customer does not have high maintenance costs. (Please see photo gallery). All design are aimed entirely to the satisfaction of the customer needs. However, it must be noted that most plants grow 10 times faster than they grow in the UK. Therefore knowledge of Mediterranean planting is important and therefore qualified design advice is vital.

Architectural Plants

When you enter a garden, whether here in Cyprus, the UK or any other EU country, if the planting scheme has been designed professionally, you will automatically focus on the dominant architectural plants. These are the plants that will first catch your eye, the bold colours and shapes that bring structure to a mundane garden. Here are some to look out for in Cyprus. Phormium tenax, commonly known as the New Zealand flax, is a clump forming perennial but grows like a semi-evergreen here. It has upright, linear long dark green leaves with tubular dull, red flowers, usually grown more for its foliage effect rather than its flower. Its eventual height can be approximately 12ft; however, if you are looking for one that’s a little smaller, try Phormium ‘Sundowner’, it has lovely broad, upright, bronze green leaves with dark rose-pink margins, a stunner when the evening sun casts its shadows! Another dwarf hybrid of Phormium tenax is ‘Bronze Baby’ that produces bold bronze leaves, growing only to 2-3ft tall. My favourite is Phormium tenax ‘Dazzler’, a hybrid of Phormium tenax that has drooping bronze leaves showing red, pink and orange stripes, glorious! Try to look around Garden Centres and Nurseries for these varieties, they are very difficult to find but I have been lucky on a few occasions to spot them. Another wonderful structural plant that is ideal in Cyprus, in my mind, to give you that bold Mediterranean style garden look, is the Agave Americana ‘Marginata’. Believe it or not, this little plant can grow up to an amazing 25ft, but that is in more than 10 years so don’t worry. Be very careful nonetheless not to put it anywhere where children are playing, it has rigid, fleshy sharp spines and toothed margins, but the yellow-margined foliage of this succulent is so striking that it can outweigh all its vicious habits. Yucca gloriosa is another architectural plant worth a mention. Here in Cyprus it is a very useful plant as a dominant feature, with its narrow lance-shaped green leaves and, again, it will give you an eventual height of approximately 8ft so plenty of space please? Last but not least is the cabbage palm, Cordyline australis, with its erect palm-like branches that thin out sparingly as the plant gets older. The older the C.australis grows, the taller its trunk gets, and its trunk can reach an eventual height of 12ft. Next time you are in the UK, look out for the bold, creamy stripes of ‘Torbay Dazzler’, difficult to find in Cyprus but you never know, it may appear one day!

Unusual Fruit bearing Trees

Looking around the Cyprus gardens it is easy to see the most popular fruit trees that we use in our every day lives, such as the Citrus varieties, Olives, Apples, and Peaches etc. But there are many other trees that can be grown in Cyprus which will reward you with more unusual culinary delights and some in growing seasons when the more traditional fruits are either over or have not yet ripened. They can therefore give us a little extra variety to the routine fruiting favourites. Take Juglans regia for example, the English Walnut, found all over the Cyprus countryside but usually in high altitudes and on fertile soils that do not dry out. It bears male catkins around April/May followed by edible green nuts that ripen September to October. Cyprus villagers use the green nuts to make a delicious traditional sweet. And we all know the dry mature walnut we use for our traditional Christmas festivities! Do not attempt to grow this tree unless you know you have a deep, fertile, moist soil. Look out for this tree in nurseries by the name of ‘karithia’. Another deciduous species of the same family, is the Carya pecan or Pecan nut. If you would like to see this tree growing in your garden, make sure you have plenty of good rich soil and plenty of space as it can grow up to an eventual height of 40 metres. Morus alba, or white mulberry, commonly known as ‘Sikamia’ in Cyprus is not widely grown in gardens, simply because the fruits have a tendency to fall during the summer and can be very juicy. However, it has been cultivated widely throughout Cyprus and if you can bear the mess the fruits are delicious! My all time favourite, the common fig, Ficus carica is indigenous to Cyprus but has been cultivated in many other warmer countries. It needs restricted roots when planted as an ornamental tree in a garden setting so place some stones at the bottom of the hole and always plant in a south facing position in full sun. This will allow the fruits to ripen to maturity. The fruits ripen from unisexual male, female flowers inside the fig in August/September so don’t forget, look out for this feast of fruits. Finally, a lovely little ornamental evergreen tree widely used in gardens in Cyprus, Eriobotrya japonica, commonly known as Loquat. The orange/yellow plum sized fruits ripen March to June. The skins are pealed when eaten to display a delicious sweet fleshy fruit. This tree is ideal in Cyprus gardens as it will only grow to an eventual height of 10 metres. In Cyprus they call it ‘Mespilus’ or ‘Mespilia’.

Pretty Perennials for Spring

The most useful attribute that perennials hold is that, unlike the annuals, which will grow then flower then set seed and die, perennials will flower from year to year as long as you make sure you look after them well. Also unlike perennials in the UK, perennials in Cyprus don’t tend to die back to the ground each autumn, in fact many perennials you will see flowering throughout the whole winter, bringing vibrant colour to our Cyprus gardens. One that is most dominant in our gardens is the beautiful mound forming Margarita rose. It has such deep green leaves but at the same time it simply flowers month after month with incredible compact deep pink, button sized flowers that really set off the green foliage. Be aware, though that at this time of year (March) a lot of flowers will start to die off and this is when the whole plant needs to have a really good trim back to allow the new growth to redevelop for the spring. Another very pretty flowering perennial that is just starting to wake up in spring gardens is Echium. It is a very outstanding perennial for its foliage effect. When first planting Echium it looks like it will develop into quite a small perennial but you soon realize that with a regular watering regime and plenty of this Cyprus sunshine it grows extremely quickly into a lovely round formed matt of grey-green foliage, covering a very large area, so beware, you must give it at least 1 metre width before you plant any other plant in this area. You will see Echium now, beginning early March, to develop some very striking erect sky-blue flower panicles, these can be a sure sign that spring is on its way. Another lovely, and useful flowering plant used a lot in Cyprus is the Osteospermum. This is classed as an Annual in the UK, but acts as a perennial here, but, remember, this needs to be severely cut back every year so that it maintains its vigour. This is the time of year when it is just beginning to flower and because it is so diverse it can be grown in long, slim terracotta pots so that it trails down the pot, or it can be trained so that it grows down walls, all perfect for a lovely old stone wall or, spreading, to cover the mundane white gravel. Remember though, all of these perennials will be taking many nutrients out of the soil because of the regular watering regime, necessary. Therefore to give them a really good start for the new growing season, don’t forget to feed with tree and shrub fertilizer each month for the next few months.