“Just miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.” “I feel as if it might be like the sea, if there was water on it,” said Mary. “It sounds like the sea just now.” “That’s the wind blowing through the bushes,” Mrs. Medlock said. “It’s a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there’s plenty that likes it—particularly when the heather’s in bloom.”
Where does garden design begin? We are convinced that it starts with understanding the strategies of the surrounding nature.
Yana Danyuk
Principal Designer
Working in the Mediterranean region, we admire its remarkable flora. To the layperson's eye, rocky screes overgrown with thorny shrubs look like worthless land, and the dry vegetation in summer evokes the feeling of a dead and lifeless desert.
In reality, the species composition of the Mediterranean region's flora is several times greater than that of Europe's temperate zone. This region has been under intensive human land use for over 8,000 years, which is why all of its plant communities have undergone profound transformations. Under the influence of deforestation, grazing, and fires, shrub communities have formed that are capable of withstanding heat and drought, resisting animal grazing, and rapidly recovering after fires.
To achieve this, plants have developed various strategies. Let us examine the mechanisms of drought resistance in Mediterranean flora.
Many shrubs have stiff, small, evergreen leaves, such as the kermes oak, strawberry tree, and mastic tree, or lack leaves altogether.
Just as northern plants shed their leaves in the cold, southern ones have learned to shed them during periods of heat and produce new ones after the first autumn rains—for example, tree spurge or three-lobe sumac.
Moisture is also conserved by leaf pubescence and folding, while essential oils create a film on the surface and prevent evaporation—for example, in rockroses, thyme, lavender, oregano, and ironwort.
The frequent branching and multi-stemmed growth habit, characteristic of many Mediterranean plants, also contribute to moisture conservation. They form dense thickets, further intertwined with lianas.
Annuals and bulbous plants survive the heat entirely as seeds or bulbs.
Thus, in summer, an unsightly picture of the local flora emerges—thorny, semi-bare thickets, rocks, and dried grasses between them. In reality, this is an extraordinary mechanism for withstanding extreme conditions, developed over millennia.
What can we do for our garden to help it survive the hot season and delight us with its beauty? Of course, we can water it endlessly. But a more sensible plan is to learn from local nature. If you look at a plant and notice small, stiff, leathery, or highly pubescent leaves, it is almost certainly capable of conserving moisture. When planting, we create large shrub communities, planting them in masses, which makes it easier for them during dry periods. Gravel mulching, at a depth of about 10 cm, also helps retain moisture. None of this means that watering is not required at all, but we can reduce it significantly.
Yana Danyuk
Principal Designer
Yana Danyuk
Principal Designer of Gardeniana. She creates designer gardens in Athens and throughout Greece.
