In general our advice has been to:
1. Go natural.
2. Save all that you can.
3. Keep the largest healthy trees and thin out the best of the young self seeded trees and shrubs.
4. fill gaps and thicken the natural vegetation with additional native species. Companies that can help you in this respect include www.cultidelta.com near Ebro Delta and Olivier.fillipi@wanadoo.fr for plants, www.proyectoforestaliberico.es for native trees and www.semillassilvestres.com based in Cordoba for seeds of Spanish wild trees, shrubs and plants.
5. Rebuild the fallen parts of dry stone walls, clear grass from the holes in an and plant up the holes with native drought and frost resisting plants
6. Fill in the holes between rocks in a rocky outcrop with a gritty nutrient rich compost and plant up more herbs.
7. Create internal vistas with sitting areas in various strategic locations.
8. develop a large natural rock terrace incorporating an interestingly shaped swimming pool and an underground water tank to collect both water from the terrace and the roof of the house during heavy rains.
9. Lay out a winding path around the garden visiting each interesting feature using local natural stone chippings over solid black plastic sheeting in open areas and bark chippings under trees.
10. Incorporate some fruit trees into the layout for the blossom, colour, shape and crops - olives, cherries, pomegranate, walnuts, almonds and apples and pears were the owners first choices and made sense in the microclimate of their garden.
11. Develop a hard wearing grassy area by strimming existing wild grasses and levelling by adding a layer of raked lawn compost during the winter months.
12.With only shallow soil in the non natural areas build a couple of raised beds filled with a rich compost to start growing vegetables as quickly as possible. So many people miss out on the benefit of ecological home grown vegetables for years by delaying this activity for a few years until the garden is finished.

Hopefully these thought make sense to those readers needing to do something about still wild areas of their gardens.

Our books 'Your Garden in Spain - Planning, planting and maintenance', 'Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain' and ' Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain' will also be useful to you. If you do not have a good bookshop nearby buy by email from the publishers on www.santanabooks.com or 952-485838.

© Clodagh and Dick Handscombe www.gardeninginspain.com October 2010.