Spring is a great time of year to see plants looking their best and temptations aplenty were on offer at the Spring Garden Fair on Saturday 4 March at Quinta da Figueirinha. The garden fairs, organised by the Mediterranean Garden Association for Portugal (MGAP), are popular fixtures in the gardening calendar and the hard working volunteers involved in the planning and organising really excelled themselves this time.
We were very pleased to have the support of Silves Camara and some great helpers from the local school (ESPAMOL), they are now all experts at organising a car park !

The largest collection of fruit trees in Portugal is in the Algarve, and the largest collection in the Algarve is at the Agricultural Experiment Centre in Tavira where 120 varieties of almond trees, 280 varieties of vine and 227 varieties of citrus are growing happily among many other unique varieties of trees that many thought extinct.

Agricultural engineers from the Regional Directorate of Agriculture and Fisheries of the Algarve (DRAPALG) have been collecting trees and vines from across the region, replanting and carefully studying specimens that form “the genetic heritage of the Mediterranean’s fruit trees.”

On Saturday 17th September, 30 members of the club plus 28 guests got together at the beautiful home of Torunn and Jon Lange to celebrate 25 years since the formation of Clube Dos Bons Jardins, which is the second oldest English speaking gardening club in the Algarve.
We were blessed with good weather so started the party with drinks and canapés on the terrace looking out over the beautiful gardens to the Atlantic Ocean. We then retired into the welcome shade of the enormous garages which had been transformed into a wonderful party hall.

The Mediterranean Gardening Association in Portugal extends a warm invitation to those readers who wish to attend the International Spring Conference weekend in Lagos on April 22nd to 25th.

The aim for this 5th annual conference is to reveal the practical and aesthetic benefits of making beautiful and sustainable gardens with plants of the Mediterranean and dry zone flora worldwide.

News of events coming up and a great start to the gardening year. If only it would rain, our happiness would be complete !! There is much of interest over the next few weeks.

September is one of the busiest garden months and heralds the switch from summer-blooming flowers to winter and spring ones and from warm-season to cool-season vegetables.

As the weather can still be very hot, start slowly by cutting down faded flowers and vegetables and preparing the ground for the best planting month of the year, October. Continue to water deeply, early in the day or in the evening. Check drought-resistant plants for signs of stress. One deep watering now can tide them, trees and shrubs over until the winter rains and help protect them from disease attack.

With the devastation of olive trees in southern Italy, European agricultural experts are gathering in Brussels to develop an action plan to save the continent’s olive trees.

The meeting was called after leaf scorch (xylella fastidiosa) was found in four ornamental coffee bushes at Rungis, an international food market on the outskirts of Paris, a fortnight ago.

Italians in the southern region of Puglia reacted with anger when officials began to cut down olive trees there.

The trees, some centuries old, were sacrificed in an attempt to stop a deadly bacterium, xylella fastidiosa, which appears to have infected as many as one million olive trees in the region and could hit other parts of Italy and the Mediterranean.