Selling flowers to Galiciens – impossible! – No it isn’t

Barbara loves gardening. She is quite proficient in raising unusual flowers. Whilst she is still a bit in the trial and error phase, as not everything does survive or grow well in the slightly aggravated climate here in Galicia, some plants do extremely well.

When we floated the idea of creating a garden similar to the one we had in the UK, combined with a little nursery for plants and selling to locals and maybe to some equally garden mad expats we where told:

“Galiciens wont buy flowers! If you can’t eat it don’t plant it!”

Neighbours seeing that it can be quite a bit of fun to have flowers, even between the veggies are quite interested and supportive.
We trialed an “open garden”, a concept not known here in Galicia and quite some people, not just expats, came.

At a  local garden center “A Campina”, not only are Carlos and Diego very knowledgeable and helpful, they also see a growing trend for flowering plants.

So Barbara wanted to test this. We asked at the local council (Sober) if we need a permit or so to just try and sell some plants on the regular market in Sober (12th and 24th each month regardless of day). They said go and try a couple of times.

So on Tuesday we did. 

We didn’t know that 12th of May is traditional the day the local buy all their “greens” to plant. After this day there is supposedly no more frost. So it was quite busy when we arrived at about 9:30.

We had just opened the car and taken the first plants out when – YES locals crowded in and the first plants went!

The learning curve involved the next most important rule here – always haggle any price is just an indication and its always worth asking. Little tricks like “Oh I only have this much money”, etc. but hey, its all part of the package of living here. So one learns the hard way that asking for a better price is nothing to be thought of twice here.

So from expecting nothing, we where quite surprised and actually pleased.

There goes another myth – If you can’t eat it don’t plant it -. This may well have been true in times gone when the life was much harsher and demanding and growing food was all important.

Still today growing vegetables, veggies are expensive here, is high on the list of priorities here, and why not.
But also today it can be quite rewarding to add some colour and fun to gardening.

Nothing beats siting down at the end of the day, surrounded by green and flowers and tasting last years wine or the just distilled water of life.

More about this soon.

Expat