december garden club postponed to dec 8 @ 7pm

and a small update from spain

Hello from Spain! 🇪🇸

I have taken two weeks off to tour gardens in Barcelona and Palafrugell (in the Costa Brava region), spend time with Max, and eat some of the best food of my life. So far, berbena’s crème fraiche ice cream with olive oil and salt takes the cake — but stingray has been a close second.

This has been a long year full of many new things for us both, and this trip has felt like buttercream frosting on the top of a spectacular but very very tired cake. It also feels like an appropriate punctuation to end this season and begin the new. I am lucky.

I am currently sitting in the small hotel lobby with my espresso, admiring the 300 year old fresco paintings of roses and chrysanthemums on the original dome-vaulted ceilings, listening to music quietly drift around the ancient plastered walls. Somehow, the terra-cotta floors are warm. A couple from Barcelona recently came to Palafrugell to restore a pharmacy from the 1700s and transform it into a 15 room getaway. Their renovation is impeccable and I am returning home with more confidence to restore our 100 year old home after seeing how gracefully it can be done to a building 3x older. Anyway, we have been walking about 10 miles each day and it is a lovely break to sit here and write to you all.

December Garden Club will be postponed to the following Thursday, same time: Dec 8 at 7pm EST.

Winter is one of the best times of a gardener’s life and I am embracing it. Time for rest, learning, creativity, inspiration. Seeing some gardens here — and even local neighborhood gardens, patio gardens, and public landscaping — has put a thousand ideas into my mind. I cannot wait to bring them to your gardens and mine.

The next newsletter has been intended for documenting the Spanish gardens that I’ve visited, but now I think all of December may be dedicated to them!

Thank you for appreciating the flexibility of Floricult during this month — see you soon for Garden Club and for too many photos of Jardin Botanic de Cap Roig. 🏰

-Lauren xo

“Happiness is results minus expectations.”