I really wanted to show you this wonderful trailing garden plant. Our neighbour Maria gave us a cutting a couple of years ago, after we’d seen it cascading over her stone balustrade and admired its bright magenta flowers, which seem to go on forever. Each flower lasts only one day, but it keeps on flowering seemingly indefinitely. We’d originally put the cutting in the flower bed in our upper garden, but it hadn’t done much and always looked like it was ready to give up on life. So, after I’d built the second of the two raised beds on our sundeck in the lower garden, I dug the plant up and settled it there, and the result is plain to see. It’s evidently much happier and seems to prefer being able to trail over wall and tumble gradually down.

Frankly, we had no idea what it was called, and neither did Maria, so only today I finally got around to using a plant ID app on my phone, and it turns out to be a version of Portulaca grandiflora-Hook, which is native to South America, and has the common name Moss-rose, even though it’s in no way related to actual roses. What’s really great about it is the fact that it hardly ever suffers if you forget to water it, and thus is ideal for this climate. Most plants here need to be drought-tolerant to survive, and this one gives value ad infinitum. I’ve no idea if it would survive in more temperate climates, but if you live in Greece and haven’t tried it, I can highly recommend it for a real splash of blousy colour. If you do live a long way further north, I’m sure it would be a probable winner under glass or on a sunny windowsill somewhere.

Just thought you might like to see it.

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