Email: angelaclaire@bjoroykarlsen.com
I would like to invite you to join me as I learn to garden in the tropics. I am Angela Claire, married to Roger and we are going to share our experiences as we move and live on a Caribbean island with our dog Diesel, cats Murck and Miss Grey and island stays that we foster and or adopt us along the way.
My passion for gardening is a lot due to my parents and grand parents. I have been lucky growing up having parents who liked to garden, and who encouraged us to participate. But living in Norway we had short summers, cold winters and although we had a large garden what we could grow was limited due to the climate. I used to love visiting my grandparents who lived in Newcastle upon Tyne in Britain as there “everything grew” a specially lilies and we would try time and time again to see how and if it was possible to have these plants we loved also in Norway. I am therefore not afraid of thinking of and trying less traditional plants to the climate I am in.
As an adult due to the military I have moved to several times to a multitude of places and everywhere I attempted to grow a garden. So I have been gardening in several climate zones but mostly in the north of Norway USDA zone 3 and 4 which is close to an artic climate but also some years in Alabama USDA zone 8a. Where I fell completely in love with Hibiscuses and Bougainvilleas. Both of which I will be planting a multitude of varieties in this garden.
So I will gladly admit this is not a blog written by an expert in tropical gardening as I am far from that, but I invite you to follow along as I learn, and try out new things as my knowledge of gardening in the tropics grows with our garden. I love to get stuck in and try out new things.
I also have a passion for reusing items, maybe not as they were intended, but giving them new life as some ting totally different. I will be doing simple DIY projects with things I found on our house, along the seashore or bought from thrift shops or local garage sales on the island. We will be doing a multitude of both smaller and larger projects. From planting in pots. Propagating plants with different methods both from our garden as well as from friends gardens and plants I find wild in the jungle. Hard landscaping and planting fruit trees, flowerbeds, colourful bushes and orchids of different types.
Our garden, is 0.67 of an acre and part of it is jungle and in USDA zone 13. One thing that amazes me is that I keep finding plants that I would normally have had in our living room as small potted window plants, where as here they grow up to be big as trees. So if you have a dream of living and gardening in a tropical climate or just want to get inspired, maybe learn from other peoples mistakes please join me by reading our blog!