Our Site How It Came To Be
We
have had gardens in both Taxco, Mexico, a mountain town at about
5500 feet, and in Montserrat, one of the West Indies islands.
Though these two geographic areas are very different, many of
the plants we have enjoyed in each of our homes were comfortable
or grew as well in the other. We now live some of the year at
Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, traveling
to other beautiful
places
whenever
we can. Along the way we always gather seeds and sometimes plants
to bring home.
One
of the major factors that affected our tropical garden in Montserrat
is the still active volcano on the island. After about three
hundred years of dormancy, it erupted in 1995 and in 1997 erupted
again laying waste to almost two thirds of the island. Its activity
level still determines the health and well-being not only of
the island’s residents, but of its plant and animal life
as well. In July of 2003, the northern inhabited part of the
island was covered in muddy volcanic ash to a depth of 2 inches
or more when the Soufriere volcano erupted again with a major
collapse of its large unstable dome. In our area we received
4 inches of the wet suffocating ash. The more delicate ferns
in our garden died as did all of the epiphytes. Surprisingly,
our orchids survived quite well. The rest of the garden plants
and trees survived, though there was a notable difference
in blooming times and some evidence of long term damage to our
well-established trees. Our lovely zoysia grass grew back beautifully
covering the inches of ash beneath its soft green
carpet.
Before
living in these more exotic places, I grew up in New England
and then lived some time in Washington, D.C. Wherever I was,
there was always a garden so you will find lots of useful
information here wherever your garden lies.
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