AN ORNEMENTAL SYNTROPIC LINE - In the Mediterranean

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hey guys. So, today I want to show you an ornamental syntropic plantation that I planted back in January and it's doing wonderfully. And really it's it can show you that you can make ornamental plantations with this. But, I did a little twist to it. I just added some mulberries every 5 m just to have some crop in there. The idea is maybe in the future to plant some seeds some seeds of stone fruit like peach, apricot, or plum, something like that. We'll see how it goes. But, let me switch the camera.

[00:00:28]Right. So, you see this is a plantation.

[00:00:30]And you can see it's already quite full.

[00:00:33]It's already filling up quite well. That is really due to this plant there, the Aeonium.

[00:00:38]It's a type of succulent plant that uh I'm just planting everywhere and between all of the trees now.

[00:00:44]This year I think I planted around uh 4,000 of them.

[00:00:48]And they're just amazing. Just got to make sure that you don't plant them when it's too cold or they die with frost if they're very young. Um if it goes below 5°, they're very sensitive to to the cold. But, especially when they're young. When they're established after a few months, um usually they're fine with frost. And we It's not like we get really strong frost. But, you can see already the trees how they're doing.

[00:01:11]Look at this acacia there. It's got a massive leaf that is like longer than my hand. This is acacia saligna. And you can see here there's a mulberry that I was talking about that I planted every 5 m or 6 m. Don't remember exactly.

[00:01:25]But, yeah.

[00:01:26]You can see I planted the high strata, the emergent strata, as well as the medium and low strata. It has all of it that it needs.

[00:01:35]And you can see there are a lot of places I planted three plants together.

[00:01:39]For example, here we got a pitus bottom as more medium strata. And we got the acacia as a high strata. And then we got the mulberry that will take over from the acacia eventually as a high strata.

[00:01:50]And then also have my low to medium strata, the viburnum here, planted alongside with a casuarina as an emergent.

[00:01:59]And uh here you can see as well the um Teucrium, the tree germander. It's planted with a kurrajong. That's going to be a long-term emergent while the casuarina takes the space. But you can see there's going to be a lot of beauty in here because there's a lot of different species and colors colors of flowers and leaves that are going to be in this plantation. And the casuarina is planted every 2 m here.

[00:02:27]Got it with the Myoporum here as a medium strata and then the Grevillea robusta will take the space of the casuarina in the future.

[00:02:34]So, you see got the eucalyptus as well every 2 m.

[00:02:39]Planted with a Celtis that uh is a tree of much higher succession, but I want the eucalyptus to the Celtis and then in future will take over from there.

[00:02:52]But yeah, that's basically the plantation there. As emergent, as I was saying, we have the casuarina, we have the bottle tree, so the kurrajong, we got the eucalyptus, we got the Grevillea robusta, and as well in some spots we got the ash, the desert ash, which is very drought-resistant.

[00:03:11]And yeah.

[00:03:14]It's a bunch of other pushing species that grow very fast.

[00:03:18]That was the the point as well in a way to try out some other species and see how they go.

[00:03:23]Like uh Pittosporum for example, the Teucrium as I was saying, and um what else we have? Oh yes, we have this plant that's really amazing.

[00:03:35]It's uh Cytisus battandieri. I don't have the I don't have the common name, but it's a type of broom basically and loses all its leaves in in summer. But then it goes so fast during the winter. It's a really good one.

[00:03:48]I wish I had Tagasaste as well. Could be a really good uh plant for this and as well yeah myoporum. So you can see it's just sort of stratified hedge that's going to happen with our emergent trees with our acacias and then below all the other bushes there. But basically here the idea is to not limit this plantation to just ornamental. We also want to plant some fruit trees in there in the future. So doing a sort of like infestation of really good plants that I know work well here is going to look much better at the retreat center for the guests to have a walk. There's a path down here for the guests to walk by and as I said I added the mulberries in there. But yeah, there's always a chance to add some fruit trees in there and some different fruit trees that can look really beautiful like loquats for example looks beautiful. Although I planted tons of them this year. So I'm thinking more like apricot or plum or peach in the future.

[00:04:45]Well, we'll probably wait 2-3 years and we'll see if the succession of the soil has increased enough to really add these fruit trees in there. Well, seeing something amazing here. You can see here.

[00:04:55]This is a huge myoporum.

[00:04:58]This is like 50 cm already.

[00:05:01]That's quite crazy.

[00:05:02]But these are the kind of plants that, you know, I can't refrain from using.

[00:05:07]They grow so fast. This with the acacia together that's going to be a beast. This place here in a year from now is going to expand like a meter and a half wide.

[00:05:18]It's going to be crazy.

[00:05:20]So this is really an example for you of the powerhouses in my climate. You can clearly see when you see plants like this that have all this foliage already in 3 months.

[00:05:32]That's absolutely amazing. This plant was tiny. You can already see the trunk that is expanding.

[00:05:38]From here same with the eucalyptus here.

[00:05:41]This is amazing to see. That is so satisfying. It seems really slow but in this climate that's fast. The exposition of the slope really matters here. That's the north.

[00:05:52]And um yeah, I can see that some other plantations that I've done this year on more of the south side, actually uh the plants haven't grown as much as this, even though they were planted 6 months ago.

[00:06:03]So, that makes a huge difference. And I can see as well, I think that there's definitely a part of it which is the growth pulse of the plants around that have been uh cut down. You can see all of the weeds have been cut down and that definitely adds a growth pulse as well. So, it's really important and that's why I don't recommend to just only mulch around. It's always good to plant some other plants with it. You can see I planted some broad beans as well.

[00:06:31]And yeah, I'm just trimming the grasses around. I already did one cut, but I'm going to do another one this week and that adds the mulch, that adds the growth pulse, and that will allow these plants to be really vigorous and healthy like this one. Look at that. So far for only 3 months, that's the plantation I'm the most satisfied by that I could tell you that for this year. So, I'm really looking forward to show you after the summer how much things have grown.

[00:06:55]All right.

[00:06:56]See you in the next