Click images to view larger versions

Your essential guide to gardening this summer
By Rob Arnhem

Most newcomers, to gardening and the Gulf, make a few basic mistakes which can be terminally disheartening. The climate is challenging, and there’s a world of difference between those tropical greenhouse indoor plants which look so glossy in showrooms and hotels, and others which can withstand the 40-plus temperatures in the all too real world outside. Any attempt to garden here needs a modicum of staying power, so don’t give up too soon. Start small and let it grow. That way you’ll avoid having a neglected half-dead garden. This is a potted solution for low-stress gardening.

For those of you who’d like a modest garden, especially if you’re on contracts that are not always long enough for you to put down roots, here are some handy tips. The garden should able to take care of itself for long periods, with perhaps just a friendly neighbour looking in every few days when you’re away. Like baby pets, a new plant grows up and can rapidly lose its charm when it refuses to co-operate or gets messy or sickens, and that’s when the budding gardener loses interest and patience. Plants, like children and pets, require different levels of care and attention. What you need is a selection which can get along without too much supervision or spoiling, so you can get along with your life and admire their growth and beauty from a comfortable vantage point.

It’s no accident that the colourful flowers planted en masse all over Oman’s urban areas are things like petunias, marigolds, zinnias, pelargoniums and cockscomb. Summer bloomers in Europe, they brighten our winter streetscapes and can survive into April. Later in the year, hardier succulents like portulacas come into their own and still manage to resist the anvil of summer. All these have been tried and tested by the Ministry of Regional Municipalities and Environment, and they’re also planted in well-irrigated and fertilised rich soils and tended by armies of gardeners. You aren’t generally going to have that sort of time or energy, so work on a smaller and less ambitious pot-plant garden which will still gladden your eye without breaking your back or your spirit.

To save water and your plants, group them in pots of various heights and shapes, and create islands of variegated foliage, with just a few spots of brighter colour from flowers. They will then shade each other and keep the spaces between and below them cooler. You can also plant trailing groundcover plants in bigger pots around a taller shrub or tree. Put taller, denser plants closest to the wall to protect the others from reflected glare and heat. Hours of unrelieved exposure to hot air, and especially a hot wind, are lethal to most plants without built-in defences. As everyone knows from being sunburnt in a swimming pool, it’s the reflection from the water back at you that is so unexpected, and plants are just as prone to being baked from above and below by heat reflected off hot white patios. A tiered system can look good, but choose your pots carefully. Porous unglazed pots allow air and water to pass through them. Glazed ones don’t, but usually have a drainage hole for excess water to escape. Put a few larger plants in those eggcup- or goblet-shaped ones, and surround them with bowls of lower spreading plants that don’t need deep soil. Resist regimentation and go for a more natural look – hardy succulent or leathery-leaf plants that can take full sun can be grouped together, and others can be sited in shadier spots. A potted tree like a small palm, or scarlet-flowered Cordia, Ixora, bright bougainvillea or an Omani lime tree can provide a central feature, or you can group together a few of the same type, preferably an odd number. Hardy grasses add texture – especially the pale mauve one with a feathery tip like a cat’s tail. Mix and match is the bottom line. Foliage wins hands down over flowers in these conditions.

Contrasting heights, colours, textures and shapes make a garden interesting. For example, the hardy Sansevieria (mother-in-law’s tongue) has long, slender yellow and green strap-like leaves, and grouped with deep green basil, a grey-leaf shrub like henna or the feathery asparagus fern, or accented with a couple of pots of petunias or geraniums in winter, or riotous mesems which bloom in full sunshine for months, it’s not difficult to make an arrangement that pleases you. Another huge advantage of using pots is that you can rearrange them or take them to another home if you move locally. Plant scented petunias, a jasmine creeper, the showy Rangoon creeper or the local ‘queen of the night’, malkat al layla, with its deeply scented tiny white flowers – their perfume will hang on the air in the evenings and early morning and attract spectacular hovering delta-winged hawkmoths. A potted frangipani also works well. And potted creepers or vines are versatile and prolific growers, over a wall, screening off an area, on one side of a porch. There are many more options than prickly bougainvillea: Ipomoea cairica has purple, trumpet-shaped blooms; the Rangoon creeper, Quisqualis indica, has scented, dusky-red tubular clusters all summer; and Jaquemontia violaceae is a lilac-flowered perennial evergreen. Another creeper that blooms all summer is Clitoria ternatea. Its electric-blue flowers with yellow centres bear pods which later twist open and self-seed. Almost any member of the Morning Glory family (Ipomoea) is also suitable.

Having a shaded area helps, and you can create a nice relaxed spot under shadecloth. Water at night and in early morning to avoid unnecessary loss to evaporation, and don’t be tempted to spray the hose quickly over everything. A quick spritz is good to refresh your plants, but although leaves can absorb water, it’s the roots that need to be kept damp, so give each plant a good mouthful or two from the hose or watering can close to the surface of the soil. Don’t spatter leaves in the heat of the day or they might scorch wherever the droplets hit them. Many plants hate getting their heads wet unnecessarily, and few tolerate waterlogged roots. They just rot away. Take the local date palm – it can suck up water if it needs to, but if there’s rain in summer when the dates are ripening, it doesn’t bear well. Local lore has it that it likes its feet in the water but its head in the fire. Most plants can survive on a reasonable watering every second day in summer, and much less in winter.

Some flowering plants, such as bougainvillea, flower best when kept quite dry – they just grow more leaves if you insist on watering them generously. Put a pot plant under the air-conditioning outlet pipes, too – you’ll be amazed how much water this produces. Monitor how much dew you get if you live near the coast, as this will reduce the need to water. Don’t fill pots to the brim with soil – leave about 3cm or more so that the roots are more protected from heat and wind, and the water and soil do not overflow. Saucers under the pots help to keep sensitive roots from drying out; and a border of old coral bits (picked up on the beach), with some nicely shaped wadi stones, driftwood or pebbles, placed round the base of your pots where the lowest pots meet the ground, will offer further protection from the heat. If you don’t like the look of plastic pots, wrap them in the fibrous material from the bases of old palm leaves – palm fibre is a good insulator – or stand them in attractive clay pots.

A pot is not a natural environment for a plant, so you will have to compensate a bit. Plants get root-bound and need to be repotted every couple of years, and the soil gets depleted of minerals and nutrients, which means extra feeding. Soak clay pots in water before using them as they contain salts and minerals which will later leach out and form a whitish crust over the soil. Although our water here is desalinated, it contains residual salt, which will build up over the years and make the soil less welcoming to the plant struggling to survive in it. Leaves curling, spotting or yellowing are a sign of some deficiency or excess. Remove mealy bugs, those little bits of white icing sugar sucking away at tender buds, and to get a good shape in a new leafy plant, such as basil or Vinca, thin out new shoots and snip off old flowers and seed heads (unless you want to keep the seed). Prune to stop established plants getting straggly and woody – you can usually do this safely after they have flowered and seeded and lost some leaves, in about August, to get them ready for fresh growth in October, when temperatures cool.

Cold tealeaves and other kitchen waste like vegetable peelings make a good mulch and fertiliser, dug lightly into the soil so as not to damage the roots. There’s no real need for expensive fertilisers – more often than not, people overfeed their plants, leading to much the same symptoms that overrich food or binge-drinking induces in our own kind. Plants need feeding before new growth and flowering, but much less so in the dormant months when they are conserving their energy. That’s the time to prune right back to encourage new shoots, or pull them up and plant new seedlings.

As a rule, plants with thicker leathery or rubbery leaves, or those containing white sap, resins or oils, are more likely to survive and thrive than those with thin, soft delicate leaves with thin stems. They’re more resistant to water loss and their ‘skins’ protect them. Favourites like bougainvillea, Adenium (the slow-growing but spectacular desert rose), Agave, Carissa, Sansevieria (mother-in-law’s tongue), date palms and palmetto palm are all heat and drought resistant, but cacti are best avoided unless you’re a collector because their spines can be a problem. A few – the euphorbia species, for instance – are dramatic, but contain a white sap which can blister the skin or affect the eyes. Likewise the lovely oleander. The prickly pear, Opuntia, is striking, but has tiny hair-like spines that aren’t easy to remove and these plants can also cause huge environmental problems: when they are turfed out, bits of them can regenerate, spreading like a rash to form impenetrable thickets. Know your plants to avoid problems. Shortly your garden will begin to attract wildlife – sunbirds and butterflies will arrive to feed on nectar; geckoes will take up residence and leave little white eggs glued somewhere dark and protected; and spiders, praying mantises and cryptic grasshoppers will visit, too. Don’t be hard on them – you created a home for them, and they're usually beneficial. Go easy on the insecticide. Soapy water is generally adequate to remove any brave aphids or those waxy white thingies sucking at new shoots. Even they are fascinating to watch, as you see the ants that farm them scurrying to tend and ‘milk’ them of the honeydew they produce. Watch out for the odd centipede or scorpion if you’re rummaging around in last season’s pots, though.

The Royal Oman Police has a nursery in Wattayah which offers a range of suitable plants. Plant indigenous ones as much as possible – they’ve evolved locally to survive. When you’re next in Muscat, a visit to Bait al Zubair Museum and the Bait Muzna gallery opposite will show what you can achieve with a little effort. Keep pottering around and experimenting – half the fun and satisfaction comes from seeing what works and knowing that you got it that way.