We recently returned from a holiday in Fuerteventura for a bit of a break after a busy start to the summer and to celebrate my show garden success. I spent a lot of time admiring the sub-tropical planting though and taking photos so thought it the perfect opportunity for another blog post!
I'm occasionally asked for tropical style planting in my UK garden designs so it was great for some inspiration.
Bougainvillea is one of my favourites and adds such a vibrant pop of colour. It looks fantastic against the typical white rendered buildings of the Canaries.
In the UK they are brilliant to brighten warm greenhouses and perfect for conservatory borders during the summer. These evergreen climbers are suitable for large containers placed in the garden during summer but must be brought in and kept frost-free in winter.
There were lots of cacti around the resort, particularly the candelabra cactus shown below.
There was also several prickly pear cacti as below.
Huge palm trees towered over the resort too which I believe were the Washingtonia filifera (below left). They can reach 100 feet in perfect conditions.
The Canary Island Pine tree, Pinus canariensis, also looked stunning against the white render work and blue skies (below right)
In the centre of Corralejo there were avenues of these trees (below) which I thought were from the Acacia family but it turns out they are Delonix regia. They are noted for their fern-like leaves and flamboyant display of flowers. In many tropical parts of the world they are grown as an ornamental tree and in English they are given the name royal poinciana, flamboyant, flame of the forest, or "flame tree" (one of several species given this name).
Finally, another classic tropical sight was the Agave trees against the white render.
I enjoyed investigating these species for the purpose of my blog so will endeavour to write blog posts on the local flora of my future travels....