uk treats costa blanca

Have just come back from 5 lovely days at Duquesa. Things are looking very nice and thank goodness the end seems to be in sight of building and maybe soon there will be an attractive entrance to drive into the village.  However it still looks tatty when you look at all the window boxes  full of weeds. I know that some of it is from the unsold apartments. But the communal ones could be planted and it would make it much tidier looking. we have had our aprtment for over a year and I seem to remember talk of the gardeners starting to plant in the communal boxes ages ago. Has anybody any information about when this may happen? 

Lynn,

Completely agree.  I was there lasy week also and I noted  that the window boxes and the plant boxes on the stairways are one of the few remainer spoilers.

The last I heard was that AEA were getting quotations for the maintenance of the stairway boxes.  They may be waiting for the building to be fully completed before issuing the contract.

But looking around DV so many apartments are either unsold or are being resold and that will leave a good number of window boxes full of weeds.

The fault lies in the builder leaving these with bare soil.  Ideally they could have put weed surpressing mats on the boxes pending the sale.  The weed seeds are a problem.  Seeds and bits of weed kept blowing in to the balcony from the nearby neglected  boxes.  Some of these from apartments that had been sold and had balcony furniture installed but the owners had not yet tackled their weedy window boxes.

So my suggestions to RyF is that all unadopted window boxes are covered with weed surpressing matting. 

As regards the stairwells  I suggest, pending AEA contracting the work,  that owners adopt a stairwell plant box.  Even if this is just to weed it.

Another factor here....   I weeded out the box on my stair  below me only to find that the neighbours cats from floor 2  started using it and they scattered soil over the stairs.   One might expect the cats owners to sweep it up but they don't seem to have noticed.  

If I was there full time I think I would have planted them all  up with tomato and red pepper plants by now !!

I have just got back myself and noticed the same thing.  Some of the communal plant boxes in the stairways have actually been planted up I think its in block 12 and it looks great and makes a big difference.  This has probably been doen by the residents rather than AEA

Steve

This was discussed at the AGM and , if my memory serves me right, RyF have promised to sort them out...and a suggestion was for a layer of white stones to be put in the planters as this is maintenance free...as yet there are no minutes to verify this...has anybody seen the minutes of the AGM???

If my memory serves me well, RSF suggested this the year before as well!

Yes the window boxes do need attention. Could we also address the dirty windows of the empty apartments? It really spoils the lovely good points of DV, and when owners leave their property unoccupied then shouldn't there be community standards set ?

Thanks 

RyF did indeed promise to attend to them at last years AGM which we attended.  They claimed to have weeded them several times prior to last years meeting too.

Their claim to have weeded them is believable.  I've weeded one on the stairs a couple of times and weeds reappear

very quickly.  So either they need covering with weed mats and decorative pebbles or planting up with plants with dense foilage as an effective / lower maintenance solution.

Well I am going to work on my stair when I'm next there.  It has a tap with a drip hose connected.  

Paul

I'm sure it would be as cheap for them to plant up the communal ones with succulents.  Our terrace boxes have succulents and cacti and they quickly covered the whole of the box to keep weeds out and survive being watered about every 8 weeks.

succulents a a good idea.  I added some in my box that already had a weed mat topped with white pebbles.
All of these plants were just cuttings taken from the local area.
They cost nothing and  are completly adapted to DV climate.



Highly recommended.

This message was last edited by PMillsom on 5/11/2008.

Your box looks lovely.  Ours were all cuttings and side shoots too and have spread really fast.

PS - we colected loads of pretty shells and stones from the local beaches to put around our succulents and cacti to suppress weeds and keep the bed moist in our absence.  It seems to be working well.