FULL TOUR OF OUR TUSCAN GARDEN - OLIVE GROVES, WOODS & PLANTS

So, what are we doing for this video? Yes, it's very different. I don't think we've ever shown you a garden tour. This is not rain, it's just two drops. Ok, this is the beginning of the garden. As you can see, the grass is dead now because it's August. There's the sign where I lit all the olive trees. So, there's this bit here where they're planted very, very tightly and close together. They're too close together. In fact, the people who came to harvest the olives with us last year said that some of them should be taken out because they shouldn't all be turning into a big bush at the top. But it's nice to walk through. Yes, whoever put them there thought they were small and wouldn't grow. And in fact, the problem is that olive trees in the middle don't get enough light. So, when we did the harvest last year, there weren't many olives at all in the middle, were there? In fact, this one's been taken out. And then all these little trees grew back. Obviously, you could cut them all and leave only one. But this is a job that wasn't done by us, it was already like this. So, we left it like this for the moment. What did you find? Oops, sorry. Here, instead, in this area, we decided to park all the wood that I cut in the forest. Basically, there was already an old shack here. I rearranged it when my brother Stick was here. And before, there had to be animals here, like a rabbit or chickens. In fact, over here, look, there's an animal hutch. I'm not sure what animal that's for. It's quite small for chickens. So, this is an apple tree. Now, they're not doing very well and there's not many apples on there at all. I think they're getting eaten by birds or worms or something. So, that needs to be looked into. This is a cherry tree. And same again, the cherries grow and they look like they're doing really well. And then suddenly, we come back one day and there's not one single cherry on the tree. So, I think the birds are eating them all. So, we're going to eventually need to figure out how we can get fruits off our trees without the birds getting there first. Here, the road divides. So, this obviously goes down to the front of the house. And then down here, it takes us into the second olive grove. And there's a few little hidden things here that we found a few months after we moved in. Come and take a look. Okay, so this is our second little olive grove. And there's two things that I found in here that are interesting. One, this tree over here, this bush that's growing up like all plaited into the tree. This is an asparagus plant. And this plant produces the biggest, fattest asparaguses. And there's loads of them. Normally, when we go asparagus hunting, which is around about March, April, each plant will give one or two asparaguses. This gives about ten. It's enough for a meal for two people. And they're big, long, fat ones. They're really good. So, every year, I come here and I search around the base and pick all of these lovely, beautiful asparaguses. So, the funny thing is, I found this when I was actually searching online for a white ceramic sink for the kitchen. And I was wandering around the garden and I noticed the white flashing. It was all covered in bushes. But it's not really ideal for the kitchen, so we've left it here. And then we have this very spooky little shed, which doesn't seem to have anything interesting in it, apart from rubbish. We haven't really looked into it, to be honest with you. And there's also a second little shed around here. It's very overgrown and you can see very tumbledown. No idea what's in there. It's funny because I often watch videos of people with big properties that find hidden buildings and stuff on their properties that they didn't know about. And then they've never discovered and never gone into. And I've always thought, well, how weird. I would go in there. I would want to know what was in it, whether there was anything in there and have a look around. And now I've actually got one myself. And now I sort of get that I don't really want to go in there. I mean, I am curious whether there is anything hidden around the back. I suppose we can go at any time when we're really, really bored one day. We'll see what's in there. So, some animal has been scratching against here. Now, Carlo says it's Indy, but I don't think it is because Indy tends to jump and scratch higher than that. I think that's some other animal. I don't think that's Indy. Let's test her. Indy! Squirrel! Here, come on! This is not her tree. No. It could be that badger, because this is where the badger came the other day. I was here and it came dashing past me and it just like went off over there somewhere. But maybe this is where the badger comes. Continuing down here, we obviously end up back at the house, but this is also where the bee garden is going to be one day. Also, these big water containers are dotted around the property and we're not using them at the moment, but when we actually start up our vegetable garden, which we will be doing, they're going to be really, really useful. So, I know they're ugly and they're not nice to see, but they're really, really handy. And this is where we think we're going to be keeping our bees in the future. And this is going to be our bee garden flowerbed, which is... Is this a weed? No. So that needs to be pulled up. There's another one. I thought it was a weed, but I just wasn't sure. Another one here. What about that? Is that another one of these? Where do these come from? OK, I'm going to throw these down a hole. So basically, when was it? February, March, we had the landslides because it was really, really heavy rain. And we actually had a little landslide here. It's taken a whole chunk of the garden away. It's a great place to throw all your rubbish, though. Obviously, compostable rubbish is what I mean. And here we can go back up to the house. I'll just show you so you can orientate yourselves. There we go. So that's where we are now. And here's our little jacuzzi area. Once upon a time, this property was very, very big and it was owned by one family. When they got old and died, they left it to their children. I think it was about five or six kids and they all inherited a piece of land. So the property was divided and we ended up buying one part of it. Our friend and neighbor Giovanni owns another part of it. And this big, big garden down here, right in front of the house, is actually Giovanni's, not ours. But it's not a problem because if we want to go for a walk there, he has no problem with that whatsoever. So we all walk in and out of each other's land and nobody shuts gates or slams the door in your face. Everybody's very, very friendly here, which is really nice. So Giovanni owns this one. And then down below, there's two more. They're like terraces going down the hillside. So he's got one, two, three. They've all got olive trees on them. And then below his, we have some more. Two or three, I can never remember. And that's what Carlo was clearing last winter. So we've got some old olive trees down there as well. And that leads into our woodland area. So the bottom terrace here is where we had a landslide earlier on this year. So that's completely blocked off at the moment. Carlo has re-dug out, you can see where all the landslide went, but he's dug it back out here. So we've got access again to this pathway and the terrace above, where there's some old olive trees up there. The nice thing about this is it's a great morning walk with dogs. It takes about 15, 20 minutes, that's all. But it's perfect for just a little quick walk when you've got other things to do. There's another terrace here that is completely overgrown again. He did so much work this winter clearing all of these terraces. And they're just all sprouted up with bamboos and acacia. And I think all of the work has almost been lost. But yeah, it's a lovely walk to do. Obviously, the whole 20-minute walk is not all our property. We come off our property and we go through the property of a man called Beppe. And then we come onto a little sidetrack. Luckily, we never come across anybody on these walks. Because I'm normally in some sort of bizarre outfit or other like this. Or my pyjamas and wellies. This is my anti-horsefly outfit. And I think I should patent it and copyright it. Because it works really, really well. There are a lot of horseflies around at this time of year. Especially in the woods. And this is the best thing I've found. This is a hat that I got with a net on it in the local garden centre. And just a simple, very, very lightweight sarong that isn't too hot to drape around me. With bright colours. Because apparently the horseflies are attracted to black. And the funny thing is, I go around on walks like this. Without really thinking about it now. And every now and again somebody looks at me as if I'm mad. But I've noticed other people on walks. For example, Claire the other day, we went for a walk. And she was head to toe in coloured lycra. Which was hilarious. And then we met a couple of people with those electric tennis rackets. That sort of electrocute the flies that are just walking around like this. So it's really interesting to see how everybody copes with the horseflies. But this is what I have found works best. Let's go into the back garden where the pool is. Have a quick look around that area. And then I need to change. Because this horsefly is down in the woods. And I want to be more protective. Now when we saw the advert of the house. There was a little red maple tree here. Like this one. And then when we came to see the house. There wasn't a red maple tree here. I think it had died or they'd taken it or something. So we actually went and bought another one. Because I just thought the colours looked really nice. I love that red just clashing with everything else. Here we also have some lavender. And this is normally where I have my basil. But it seems to have all vanished. Indy, don't eat the strawberries. And there's a lovely strawberry down there. And we've got quite a few strawberry plants. We'll have that. All of these lavender plants need to be trimmed back now. This is the rose bush we bought at the market. That looked a bit sick when we took it out of the packaging. But it seems to be doing absolutely fine now. And we're in the back garden. I'm quite pleased that this Billy Buttons has actually produced some more buttons. Which is nice. But this one here is looking a little bit sickly. Hopefully it will get back to good health. Here we have, and we've just looked this up on Google, this is a Bird of Paradise shrub. Very, very pretty alien looking flower. That was already here. So that always is growing well. And seems to flower on and off throughout the summer. We've seen these plants in our neighbours' garden. And they're very pretty. But here they don't seem to be doing well. We'll see in the future. This one here is a datura plant, brought in from Positano. And it looks like it's practically dead. I don't think it's dead. But we'll see this in the future. For now it looks really bad. This is a mandevilla plant. And this one seems to be doing quite well. Obviously, since the soil is very different from what we have in Positano. This is a very sandy soil. Which becomes hard when it's dry. It's very soft like mud when it's wet. And I don't know if these plants go well with this type of soil. In Positano this one is doing well. Not exactly in our house, because this one needs a lot of sun. But in my mother's house there's a beautiful one. So I don't know, we'll have to see. These are experiments. We plant the plants and then we'll see what happens. This is a myrtle plant and it's doing very well. Not just this one, all the myrtle plants are doing very well. Even the gaura is doing very well. This one with the mixed flowers, double coloured, is really very pretty. Yeah, I want to get that and plant more of it all along there. I think that would look nice. We're not sure how our olive harvest is going to be this year. We might not get much oil at all, because there's been two problems this summer. First of all, in May, when the blossoms were out, there were some really heavy rains that knocked a lot of the blossoms off the trees. Of course, it's the blossoms that become olives. So we lost a lot then. And then later on in the summer, a certain type of fly came along. These flies drill holes into the olives and then lay eggs, which obviously become worms or maggots. And that ruins the olives. In fact, I can see one right here. It's got a hole in it and you can see it's been ruined. So we've been talking to a lot of people in the area and everybody's saying the same thing, that this year there might not be an olive harvest, which is a shame. I think we might have just enough oil to get us through for a few more months. And then we might have to go and buy it in the supermarket like everybody else and hope that next year it's better. One of the things that we can do is refill these bottles. Now, we often get asked, why are there empty bottles hanging on the trees? Well, they're not supposed to be empty. We need to fill them with a mixture of ammonia and put an anchovy in it or something. There's all sorts of recipes that you can use. And then if you spray them, so our neighbour in Positano, he sprays the bottles yellow with just a can of yellow spray paint. So the yellow attracts the flies and the flies then go into the bottle rather than into the olives. So that's all we can do. So next year we need to get ourselves together and get enough bottles and refill them all and try and save some of the olives. This is a Japonica, a Fatsia Japonica. And originally we had this by the pool in the big terracotta pot and it was slowly going yellow because these do not like direct sunlight. So early on in the summer, we moved it here in the shade and it is much, much healthier and it's gone dark green again. Now, what do we want to do? Should we rest a bit? Yeah, we don't use this bed enough. Right, that's it. I can't be bothered to go anywhere else in the garden. I'm going to just sit here now and relax. So I hope you've enjoyed our garden tour and we'll see you in the next video. Ciao!