Hacienda style plants
For your hacienda garden, once you've got the hard features like walls and furniture sorted out, there are any number of plants you can aim for. Absolutely classic hacienda style plants include bougainvillaea, jasmine, agapanthus, hydrangeas, begonias, poppies, geraniums, dahlias, primroses, orchids, and magnolia trees. To be authentically Mexican, you've got to have some of the weird blue agave, that peculiar succulent - a member of the lily family - which is the raw material from which the mind-blowing native Mexican tequila is made (okay, all tequila is made from agave, but the brands you drink in Mexico are amazingly powerful and hallucinogenic). The agave plants look downright weird, like naval mines or sputniks. They have strong, sharp spikes like brilliant green swords and you don't want to fall into them in a drunken stupor. Plants that are perennials in Mexico are, of course, only annuals here, or at least need lots of winter protection, so bear in mind that you won't have a lot of winter colour and may want to invest in a tiled wall or mural to add warmth through the darkest and chilliest part of the year. And while all these plants will grow beautifully in terracotta pots, make sure those pots are properly frost proof - they may cost two or three times what their cheaper garden centre cousins do, but the investment is worth it, because if they crack in the frost you lose the pots and the plants they contained.
Posted by The Allotment Blogger on Wednesday, August 15, 2007
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