THIEVING GOATS & GARDENERS

Just returned from a landscaping project in Turkey and my belief that Euphorbias are repellent to goats is irrevocably proven. The little blighters will graze on anything lush and green in the garden but all the euphorbia now in full florescent flower studded down the hillsides remain pristine and unmunched.

Leading us neatly to the small problem with the orange/lemon trees, recently planted in (what I consider to be) elegant avenues in a client's garden. In this case  it is not the goats doing the pilfering, but the gardeners. 

You may patiently explain to them, with multiple hand signals and full-blown interpreters that whilst it is perfectly OK to supplement their three squares a day with whatever fruit happens to be ripening that month, ultimately they are they are there to look after the garden whilst an owner is absent. 

So they take two or three oranges a day each to eat with their meals ... then at the end of the day they fill buckets with nine kilos or more of any ripe fruit to take home for the family, leaving me to account for the disappearing fruit phenomena to the owners. The garden owners (quite understandably are deeply suspicious) and believe that since they have never seen a fruit ripen in their garden, let alone ever tasted any of them, I must have somehow planted non-fruiting trees!

It is almost impossible to try to convey to the Turkish gardeners that we in Northern Europe like to grow plants for ornamental purposes. They seem amazed and staggered by this ethos. Why on earth would you grow something that ultimately won't bear fruit or supplement the daily diet in some way? Well, if you are a poor family working the land, understandably ornamental gardens just aren't that high up on the agenda. So when I stand there getting all arty-farty, trying to convey I would like the heads of the trees pruned to make large round lollipops, all they see is that I am removing potential fruit bearing limbs.

So you can see what we are up against. Still, I shall keep repeating my mantra in the hope that one day soon, they will understand our position. 

In the meantime, a kilo of apples, oranges, lemons, pomegranates etc a day, keep the owners at bay.