Making a Mediterranean Bed - Part 19

Garden transformation Part 19 – Dreaming of an Olive Tree

Those of you that have been reading this garden transformation series from the beginning, know by now that the whole garden design started with the raised vegetable beds. Getting food growing was the top priority.

I then drew the garden out to scale and set about slotting in all of the other priorities, such as the Greenhouse, Pond and seating areas.

Even though the garden is mainly a kitchen garden, flowers are extremely important.

Mainly because, flowers bring pollinators. Without these wonderful little insects we would have very little food indeed!

Also because I am a self-confessed plantaholic, that struggles to go anywhere that sells plants without buying one – or more!

I wanted flowers everywhere, especially to be seen from the house.

October 2014 – Time to think

In October 2014 just over a year after moving here, I had a rather unexpected interruption to the garden renovations, in the form of perforated appendicitis. Luckily it was dealt with successfully and I was back home in a few days.

My recuperation involved more sitting than I am used to. So I sat in front of the patio doors, looking out at the garden and imagining what I wanted to see from the house.

As I knew my husband loved olive trees, I started to imagine a small raised bed jutting out into the patio, with an olive tree at the front.

I thought this would remind us of the wonderful holidays we’ve had in Spain. Some days especially when we were travelling from one part of Andalusia to another, there would be olive groves as far as the eye could see, for mile upon mile.

We already had a small standard olive in a pot, that had proved itself to be incredibly hardy. In December of 2010 when the temperature dropped to -13. Our little olive was knocked off its shelf by the volume of snow. When the snow finally melted we found it, on the floor out of its cracked pot and we were sure it would die. But oh no, it’s still with us now!

We had a brief look around at mature olive trees. They were beautiful, but with enormous price tags. The cheaper ones on the other hand, tended to have no character at all.

We weren’t sure if we would end up getting one, but it wasn’t a problem for the moment, we still had a lot to do before that decision needed to be made.

2017 – Finding an Olive tree

Still twelve months away from building the Mediterranean bed. I happened to pop into Homebase one lunchtime. To my surprise they had olive trees in. They weren’t a bad size but most of them were pretty straight and characterless. But there was one that was slightly dearer than the others, and I thought immediately that it would be perfect.

I didn’t want to buy it without my husband seeing it, and besides I couldn’t have got it home! That night we managed to get to the store 5 minutes before closing and luckily it was still there.

That first year in it’s large pot, we had a bumper crop of olives, that we processed.

Now we just had to build it a proper home!

August 2018 – Building the bed

I had pretty much decided on the shape of the bed, but there’s nothing quite like laying it out. Which did lead to a little tweaking.

Once we were happy with the layout, my trusty labourer (other name husband) dug out the foundations, and we concreted.

September 2018 – Waiting for soil

It was only seven rows high, so even with my slow brick laying, it didn’t take too long.

The first phase of house extention was going on at the same time, so we couldn’t finish it until the builders had gone.

October 2018 – Planting the Olive Tree

Once the scaffolding had been removed, we set too on digging up the last of the turf for the patio. This is where we were getting the soil from to fill the bed.

As I couldn’t wait to get the olive tree in, we planted it when the bed was still only half full of soil. Putting a board across.

Olive Tree planted and a freed up pot…..

By the end of October it was filled, planted and finished off with yet more stones that we’d dug out of our ice-age garden.

The Plants

I’ve planted Himalayan honeysuckle across the back, which has extraordinary flowers on, and the bees love it.

But not as much as they love the four lavenders around the base of the olive tree, they are covered in bees when they’re in flower. They are called ‘Dwarf Blue’ bought from Norfolk lavender and are exactly what the name implies.

There’s a rosemary bush – great for cooking. A tall Achillea ‘terracotta’, yellow flowering Cotton lavender. Two types of Salvias, a purple one Nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ and a blue ‘Salvia Patens’. There’s vivid pink flowers on silvery foliage of Lychnis coronaria ‘Rose Campion’ and equally vivid orange of Helianthemum ‘Ben More’.

The white with a mauve centre of Catananche caerulea ‘Alba’ which looks a cross between a daisy and a corn flower.

A white flowering Hebe, white dianthus, and two types of Erysimums, an orange ‘Apricot Twist’ and a purple ‘Bowles Mauve’. These both get too woody and need replacing every few years, but its worth it as they flower for months.

It’s amazing what you can squeeze into a relatively small border!

Enjoying the bed

I’m so pleased with how this bed has turned out, especially as it can be seen from the kitchen, dining area and sitting room. The Olive tree is even lit up at night.

This year we’ve had to move the main table and chairs to this area as the bigger patio has become a temporary builders yard, whilst the final stage of house renovations takes place.