A break in Madeira

Mark and I have just spent a very relaxing week on the Portuguese Island of Madeira. Famed for its gardens, Madeira is blessed with a lovely year round spring like climate. Temperatures have been about 16°C (61°F) or so for the whole week and plenty of sunshine, which was a welcome change from the cold, wet, and windy weather back home.

Madeira was discovered by Portuguese sailors in 1419, and the first settlers began colonizing the islands over the next few years.  To begin the development of agriculture, the first settlers had to clear parts of the dense forests that covered much of the island and also constructed large number of canals (levadas) to irrigate the mountainous landscape. The building of the levadas of the following centuries has led to some spectacular walks and trails along side of them.

By far the largest city on the island is Funchal where we stayed, with a population of just over 100,000, is home to most of the modern hotels and also the main botanical and pleasure gardens in Madeira. The old town still has a lovely charm with many historic buildings.

 

We will blog about some of the main gardens in Madeira separately, but here are a few photos to keep you going for now.

Monte Palace Tropical Gardens - Oriental Gardens

General view of Funchal from Reid's Palace Hotel gardens.

Gardens at Hospicio da Princesa

Botanical Gardens

Jardim Municipal Funchal



Blandys Garden - Quinta do Palheiro Ferreiro

Monte Palace Tropical Gardens

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Madeira Series: Palheiro Gardens

Madeira is full of beautiful of gardens, in fact you can even argue that the entire island is a garden. The Palheiro Gardens, better known as Blandy's Garden is one of their more popular public ones and is also known for it's quintessentially English style. Owned by the Blandy family since 1885, it has a sunken garden, topiaries, and an overall planting scheme that is more reminiscent of traditional English gardens spiced with a few exotic plants dotted all over.

This garden could have well been in England...

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Madeira Series: Reid's Palace Hotel

It has been a while since we last went to Madeira, and Marks recent blog post mentioning it reminded me that we had not shared photos of the fabulous tropical garden at Reid's Palace Hotel. The hotel itself was founded by William Reid, who was the son of a Scottish crofter. Reid had originally arrived in Madeira in 1836 where he made an income by renting out quintas to wealthy visitors before he entered the hotel business. Sadly for Reid, he died before his Reid's hotel was completed. Over the years the Hotel has remained the height of luxury on Madeira, we didn't stay at Reid's but at a nearby hotel however we couldn't let the opportunity to see the gardens go amiss!

Iresine explosion!

Blechnum gibbum

A gorgeous border of ferns! Blechnum gibbum and Cyathea cooperi

The gardens wrap round the hotel and cling to the cliff tops, with the pleasant year round climate a great range of exotic plants can be grown, although we have noted many gardens on the island use quite a limited pallet of plants.

Agave attenuata

The Hotel garden offers fantastic views across Funchal.

We pretty much had our visit to the garden to ourselves.

Strelitzia nicolai

Ferns and Agave mixing, the warm and moist climate giving both a good habitat. I suspect this wasn't a planned planting combination.

Deserted pool clinging to the cliff top

Cordyline fruticosa

Farfugium, we grow a number of these at home.

As I mentioned it has been a while since our last trip to Madeira, perhaps we will have to think of another trip soon!

Gaz

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Old Couple, Old Sweater

Do you ever find yourself wanting to go back to the same holiday destination over and over again? Or variety and new places to see each time you travel much more your thing?

Time and other resources generously permitting, most of us would probably want a good mix of both but the reality is that one resource would be shorter than the other hence preferences should be made.

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Call of the Familiar

As I sat yesterday trying to think of things to possibly see and do for the coming new year I also found myself making a list of things and places to best perhaps steer clear of temporarily, just to inject some variety on our visiting repertoire.

Three places stood out for us, namely Madeira, Kew Gardens, and Cornwall.

Madeira

Nothing wrong with these places, in fact we love them to bits! It's just that we have visited them far too many times already and although each visit is enjoyable, it does make you wonder too if we've just let ourselves get stuck in some sort of routine.

Variety is the spice of life as they say and new experiences keeps ones interest refreshed and on going. And if you only have a limited amount of days off from work in a year there is this little pressure from within to try and include as many new things within this finite amount of free time.

Kew

So no visits to Madeira for quite some time? Perhaps bypass visiting Kew Gardens all of next year? And maybe break tradition and skip a spring week in Cornwall next year? There are so many other places and people to visit out there, so many things to see...

But there is also the call of the familiar. If you enjoy a place so much then what's wrong with visiting it over and over again? And isn't it nice that when you go to a place you know it so well than you don't have to adjust to your surroundings anymore? That you can just immediately settle in and not think anymore, but just feel it, straight away.

Cornwall

Heed the beckoning of the new or the call of the familiar? Sleep over it and let the universe answer the question for later on.

And I got some answers this morning, looks like it's going to be a 'meet halfway' thing. Despite initial hesitations due to our previous repeated visits, the feeling seems just right now to just give in and....what the heck, visit it again for the nth time soon. And one we'll be visiting again very soon as it's near a nursery that has a post Christmas sale ongoing.

Looks like only one will get the chop for a visit next year. But what about all those wonderful nurseries there, in a year when we need to stock up on plants again?

Ahh C'est La Vie! But what about you, would you prefer to keep coming back to the same place you are familiar with, or would you rather visit somewhere new each time? Or have you found a middle ground between the two?

Mark :-)

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Madeira Series: Funchal Botanic Gardens

Funchal's Botanic Garden only started in 1960, so is a relative newcomer compared to many of the well known Botanic Gardens elsewhere in Europe. However there are a significant number of large and interesting plants to make a visit worthwhile, (plus entry is a very modest €3).

The garden, like much of Madeira is on quite a steep slope, so various terraces are cut into the hill side.

The garden has a large arid section with numerous large yucca, aloe, agave as well as opuntias and euphorbia. This really highlights just how fantastic these plants can be given the right settings, and the ability to grow outside permanently without a British winter to set them back.

Everywhere you go the terrain of Madeira is breathtaking. This photo taken from the botanic gardens shows the engineering skill required to create the expressway. There are a number of similar bridges and tunnels cut into the volcanic rocks to create a fast link along the southern coast of the island.

More photos on our Facebook page

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