The planting

What actually grows here

The Sharon villa garden is a short list, repeated with money and taste. We name the plants we cut, and the ones we leave to another trade.

People say “the grass” as if the plain grew one species. It does not. A Ramat HaSharon lawn is often hybrid Bermuda, a Herzliya one often kikuyu that has been pretending to be a stripe for years, and a garden near the sea sometimes holds paspalum because salt does not bother it. The mower can make them look related. It cannot make them the same plant.

The turf

Bermuda

Common Bermuda, Cynodon dactylon, and the finer hybrids made with African Bermuda, are the lawns that stripe. They grow hard from late spring into autumn, then rest. A tawny Bermuda in January is dormant, not dead, and it does not need a weekly cut or a sack of nitrogen to prove it is alive. If a ryegrass overseed was put down in autumn, the winter green is the rye, and it will brown when summer returns. That exit is the point of the overseed. We mow whichever of the two is actually growing. We do not sell seed on this paper, and a blank packet is not a product.

Kikuyu

Cenchrus clandestinus, still called kikuyu in every garden on this round, is thick, fast, and rude to the beds. It runs. Edging is how you live with it. One visit will not eradicate it, and we will not pretend a spray will. In a mild Sharon winter it often stays green enough to need a cut every few weeks. In summer it wants the weekly round.

Paspalum

Seashore paspalum, Paspalum vaginatum, shows up in coastal gardens that take salt air and, sometimes, irrigation that is not as fresh as the brochure said. We mow it. We do not convert it to Bermuda because a guest preferred the colour. A change of species is a renovation, quoted after a walk, not a line on the classified list.

Kikuyu does not become Bermuda because the mower was expensive.

Species, the turf

Trees and hedges

The olive, Olea europaea, is the tree the plain actually looks like. We clear the skirt of suckers, lift the leaf fall before the rain mats it, and we do not turn an old olive into a lollipop. Structural cuts are outside a maintenance visit.

The hedge that defines these streets is usually Indian laurel fig, Ficus microcarpa, clipped into a wall. It takes a face from the ground, up to 2.2 metres, which is the hedge line on Grounds. Its roots are not our business to cut. Pittosporum, Pittosporum tobira, is the softer hedge, and it shears cleanly if you do not wait until the wood is bare sticks.

Bougainvillea flowers on the growth it has just made. A hard shear before the show costs the colour. We will say so and wait, or we will cut if you would rather have the shape. Rosemary, lavender, and lantana take a shear after they bloom, not a weekly buzz. Citrus gets a light shape. We do not top Italian cypress into a flat table, and we do not climb Washingtonia or date palms. Above 2.2 metres, and any felling, is another contractor.

Nothing on this page is a claim that a fertiliser, a compost topdress, or a particular mowing height will cure a disease. If the lawn has a real pest problem, the next person is a licensed exterminator, not a taller story from us. The calendar says when each of these plants is asking for work.