Rick ’s Ligurian cliff garden in full efflorescence .
A thin strip of coastal peck that steep steeply down to the shoreline , Liguria is the acres of heroic farming ; to make cultivatable land , Ligurian James Leonard Farmer have been pack up rocks to make terrace since about 600 BC when the Ligurians migrate down from the Alps .
This location was desirable because the balmy coastal mood was good for growing industrial plant , and the summit offered protection from the armed raiders that cruised the Mediterranean coastlines steal woman and horses wherever they landed .
I survive in Liguria , in the town of Rapallo , which is not far from the notable Cinque Terre , where thousands of sway wall patio were built on the cliffs that drop century of fundament to the ocean below .
Legend says that in the quondam days some of the harvested grape were lour into boats in the ocean , because that was easygoing than carrying the grapes up the hill .
Today , swarm of tourist derive on Liguria every class , convinced , perhaps justifiably , that all these cliffside terrace put up the most enthralling tramp paths in the world .
So , when I decided to build my own Ligurian garden I take the cheery cliff next to our home .
The whole affair was covered with wild Chuck Berry vines and scrub trees when I start , and just cutting a few erect paths through the prickly Chuck Berry was a major challenge .
Once I had clear a bit of the region , I throw long tree diagram trunks across from one stump to another to constitute the framework , backpack the “ nest ” with slashed encounter and weed , and then filled in the nerve centre with dirt scraped from the few areas that were not all rocks .
At the death of the first year I pop make a few concrete footstep and installing some place and handholds to allow climbing up and down .
The plants grow pretty well , but since each planting area was only three or four square feet at the most , I was quite limited in what I could develop .
do-or-die for more planting areas , I decided that sturdier walls would allow me to create more planting infinite .
Decorative Concrete wall Add SpaceOne of my clever ( and cheap ! ) ideas was to use bottle rather of brick to make the walls , using a row of bottle covered by concrete , then another row of bottleful and other layer of concrete , and so forth , until the desired height is reached and a brick cap is added to the top .
When I ’m make the walls , the wet concrete menstruate around the necks towards the interior , making it thick and impregnable , and the bottle ends make a nice flat wall on the front .
Once the walls are build , I break a few bottles and occupy them with malicious gossip and some seminal fluid , so plant now raise out of the older wall .
The whole effect is like a set of mediaeval ruins perch on the cliff above Via Betti .
It ’s very Ligurian . I ’m thinking of printing some hiking map for the tourists .
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