‘Well,’ he announced finally. ‘We can’t reduce the size of the house. But I think we might be able to increase the size of the plateau.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, standing up and moving beside him to look at the marks he had made.
‘We could enlarge the top of the mountain.’
I gulped. ‘How?’
‘By spreading all the soil around. We could scrape it all away, push it all over the sides. If we lowered the height of the platform by, say, one metre it would give us an extra three or four metres all the way round. That would enlarge the garden considerably.’
It was a brilliant solution, but audacious. Very few people would think of changing the shape of a mountain. They might relent and make the house smaller, or agree to craft some terraces along the contours of the slope or even develop the teeth-flossers’ site into a garden. But he was prepared literally to move the earth for me and I loved him for it. I threw my arms around his neck and squeezed until he prised me off. I was so excited. I would have a garden; a great big one, all around the house, enough for trees and grasses and shrubs and vegetables.
We climbed back up to join the others and Stan went to talk with Peter and George about the indelicate art of earth moving. Lottie and Matthew were cracking almonds on a stone and eating them.
‘This is the sacrificial almond-cracking stone,’ Matthew announced, presenting the rock at his feet to all assembled as if it were the holiest stone in the universe. Knowing how Matthew loves his traditions and homely routines, I made a mental note to save the stone, if I could get to it before the earth-movers arrived. How things can change in a minute. Earth-movers! Lowering the platform by a metre. That would mean shifting tons and tons of soil, most of the mountain top. Oh my God. Was that allowed? Was it safe? Was it possible?
Before we left, Stan came over and asked, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go down to the boundary?’
‘I’ll save it,’ I replied.
‘I can just see you in twenty years’ time, still peeping over the edge, never having ventured down there.’
‘Not at all, I’m going to organise excursions and picnics for our guests. Whole days out, down to the ruin or the river bed.’
‘You’ll probably pack flares in their picnic baskets in case they need rescuing.’
‘On the contrary,’ I answered. ‘We’ll be skipping down those terraces like mountain goats. It’s just that I’m not ready for the boundary, not yet. I’m still trying to get my head around this bit up here, especially now that I’m going to have a big garden and it’s going to be a lot of work.’
Just how much work, neither of us knew, but the risks were apparent. We had taken on something that was larger than we might have the strength to manage, both in terms of a project, and in terms of the challenges it would present for our relationship. This would really test us.
Fortunately, we had limped over the first hurdle of disagreement that day, but only just. If it hadn’t been for his lateral thinking, growing the plateau rather than shrinking the house, we’d still be arguing over how to share the same plot of land. We had survived. But before much longer we would truly understand that my words, ‘we have to share the plateau’, were prophetic. We were only just starting.
This visit had laid bare three challenges. We had to talk to each other more (and I don’t mean him informing me and me nodding without saying anything; I mean proper discussion); we had to design the garden together (which meant me putting up with his enveloping control in order to use his great design ideas) and we had to support each other (keep each other’s spirits up even when we thought the other was at fault). This was going to be a long and difficult project and we needed to look to each other for comfort.
‘Who wants a beer?’ Matthew shouted. He climbed in with George and we headed off in convoy back to Colmenar. The Hotel Arrieros on the edge of town had a lovely sunny terrace partially shaded by grapevines and palms. There were late crimson cannas and fading oleanders in the garden, but the jasmine still had a few blooms and did its best to scent our air as we took our places outside at a table for six. We eventually ordered what we thought was vegetarian paella, with red wine from Murcia and some goats’ cheese. But we were hopelessly off the mark. When raw black pudding, white wine and sheep’s cheese arrived, we made a mental note to bring a travel dictionary next time.
CHAPTER THREE: DESIGNING
AROUND that time I seemed to be spending weeks in Asia on business; the perfect place, I thought, to gather ideas on flora exotica. Poor, pathetic me. Exotics were never going to grow in Colmenar, but that didn’t prevent me from snooping around any garden I could get into and hoping that something of its magic would inspire my Spanish paradise.
The distractions of exotica
An error of judgment was to imagine that the wow of the tropical jungle could translate into the wow of a Mediterranean garden, when in fact the Mediterranean is an altogether more placid place. A tropical garden drips luxuriantly, whereas an Andalusian garden sighs contentedly. The sad paradox of the tropical garden is that because it is so lush and green and amazing and colourful and diverse and exotic, after a very short time it ceases to have the wow factor at all. For the European spending any time in Asia, all that lushness quickly becomes familiar and to an extent, invisible. The noise of parrots and popping seeds soon becomes inaudible. It’s only when you see one solitary banana tree in full flower up close or when a coconut drops onto the ground in front of you do these single events register. But seen all at once, they amaze far less than they should.
So it is with people. We are sometimes so close to those we admire that we are numbed by their spectacle and cease to register it. The reason why we had fallen in love with someone, for example, soon gets forgotten in the daily irritations of the rest of their character. Only when they do something simple and brilliant are we reminded of their greatness.
With this in mind, I dragged Stan off to Thailand that year in search of inspiration. Would it be possible, I wondered, to get an effect of jungle in Spain without copious use of water? In most of Koh Samui, an island off the south-eastern tip of Thailand, the jungle drips constantly, mushes big fat leaves and gaudy flowers into your face at every corner and overpowers the senses. But one resort had designed their gardens with considerable restraint. They resisted the temptation to jumble it all up together and focused instead on just a few spectacles. Here was a lesson in simplicity that I could apply to my London garden as well as in Spain.
The Hymenocallis, for example (variety litorallis) has spectacular long white petals that can only be appreciated as a single plant against a plain wall. They call it the Spider Lily in Asia. It’s a bulb and is used in much the same way we might use agapanthus in Europe. There they also used it with several well-spaced specimens as a border. Having long, rounded, sword-shaped leaves like the agapanthus, it worked well. If I ever needed an edge effect on the west side, perhaps around the swimming pool or against the kitchen wall, this might do it.
Another serious temptation came later that year when I stayed in a hotel in Mexico that had a Japanese garden. An extremely mature tulip tree, or Liriodendron tulipifera totally seduced me. Although this gorgeous species is known in Britain, in warmer climates it rises to 30m and throws bright orange and pink blossoms like massive tulips up into the sky where no one can appreciate them except birds. When, with benevolence, the tree drops these flowers the size of a boxing glove onto your head, into your drink, beside your lounger, their startling beauty can be appreciated by ground dwellers like us. Nurseries in South America selling the tulip tree ask if you have staff to sweep up the blooms, for on a wet path in fading daylight, they become as dangerous as banana skins.
There were other tropical glories I was thinking I could go for, like the flame tree, called tabachin in South America, or the flamboyant tree in other parts of the world. They grow in a variety of climates. Perhaps I could persuade them to burst their burning flowers onto our hillside?
But that’s the thing about visiting beautiful gardens, isn’t it? It’s like shopping. The experience lulls you into believing you can recreate that look, that style, at home on your own. Rather like thinking that the svelte black dress on the mannequin in Selfridges is going to look great on your size-sixteen Amazonian frame. I can’t be alone in falling for this conceit, surely? All of us have visited a garden and immediately believed we could recreate that look back home. Fair enough, if the garden you visited was in Norfolk and you live in Suffolk. But suppose you went down to Cornwall for a holiday and you toured round looking at all these lush valley gardens like Trebah, Tresco, Trewithen, Tre-this and Tre-that and then go home to your suburban garden in Gateshead? You’d have to take into account the rain back home – as well as the cold winters - and put aside all pretence about the temperate influence of the Gulf Stream. Now suppose, like me, you get tempted by gardens not just in different countries but on different continents? Then you really do run the risk of getting carried away, like Mrs Bennet on learning the size of Mr Darcy’s estate. I was deluding myself. I was a total naive; an amateur with a garden greed that led to foolish mistakes.
Of course, it is possible to grow a wider variety of plants in our climates than we are led to believe by locals. Those of us who are more adventurous find we can get away with things the locals would shake their heads at. But even I cannot make it rain torrentially every afternoon for an hour in southern Spain so that my flame trees, tulip trees and Hymenocallis feel at home.
Oh, but if only I could. One tropical plant I would bite your hand off for is the water canna or Thalia dealbata. It grows in water and dangles the most delicate little flowers from 4ft high in the air. They tangle together like tassels from a finely fringed silken shawl, and the temptation to wade in and untangle them so their elegant arching habit can be appreciated is almost irrepressible. Perhaps there would be room in my Spanish garden for some spectacular water exotics? It would mean finding a reliable water source. We’d have to see.
Another plant I fell in love with at first sight, and which is common across Asia and the Mediterranean, is the frangipani. If only I could buy a large specimen and plonk it right in the middle of the courtyard, wouldn’t that be grand? Frangipani is ubiquitous across Asia, adding not just a light floral scent all day long (badly copied by Western fragrant candle manufacturers) but offering spectacular white waxy flowers that the local girls clip into their pigtails or poke behind their ears. Frangipani may sound rather too tropical for southern Spain, but its spreading shape is so gorgeous, its bark so grey and knobbly, and its waxy flowers so perfect, that it would be irresistible. I made a mental note to put the varieties alba, obtuse and rubra on my list.
And trees. We’ll be needing more trees. One tree that knocked me out in Thailand was what the local gardeners called the tropical almond, but what is officially known as Terminalia catappa. These trees deserve both their preservation and reputation, for a more useful tree would be hard to find. They are very tall, up to 35m high and grown for their ornamental shape and the abundant shade proffered by their large, waxy, dark green leaves with a red underside. You could sleep contentedly under a cool Terminalia catappa for three hours in the heat of the day, waking only to stare up through its red and green canopy then turn over and go back to sleep again. You would be woken around 4 o’clock by a large heavy leaf, the size and weight of a paper picnic plate, falling right beside you. This tree is not only beautiful, but useful. In Polynesia they make canoes from its dense, water-resistant trunk. The fruit is edible and the leaves are used in a tisane to cure liver disease, dysentery and diarrhea. Even Siamese fighting fish are said to fight better in water whose pH has been lowered by the addition of a few leaves from the Terminalia catappa. What a tree! How bounteous a gift. But I had to accept that it was not suitable for Spain.
The temptation did not stop that year. Two trips to Kuala Lumpur and two to Singapore allowed me to visit their botanical gardens and to fall even more in love with plants I could never grow in Spain. What’s a girl to do?
Botanical Gardens, Putrajaya
Fortuitously, right opposite my hotel in the government city of Putrajaya in Malaysia were the National Botanical Gardens. I didn’t even need a taxi ride. Only a ten-minute walk from my hotel, which included crossing a six-lane highway (they don’t cater for pedestrians here - more on this later) brought me to this extremely varied garden on the side of the large manmade lake that anchors this town. Putrajaya is a garden city that was created in 1999 from scratch to move government workers out of nearby Kuala Lumpur, where the traffic was making their commute and therefore their attraction and retention as employees very difficult. Putrajaya feels like a garden city and is competently planted and maintained. Many of the roads are edged with short-cropped bougainvillea, verges are tended so their pretty palms and cannas and heliconias provide just a spot of colour, but not too much to distract drivers. There appeared to be a growing interest in topiary there, suggesting the municipal garden maintenance team, which must number in the hundreds, had run out of things to do.
The botanical garden is enormous, covering 230 acres, of which they have only developed sixty-three so far. A leisurely hour-and-half walk allows a good look at all the interesting bits. The Heliconia Trail, for instance, includes all the usual heliconia suspects, like those parrot-head flowers we see in tropical bouquets, but also all the related plants like banana, amaranthus and the largest Ravenala madagascariensis (travellers’ palms) I have ever seen. They must have been 20m high. Far too tall for any weary traveller to climb for a paltry cup of water. I also found bright red-stemmed bamboo, Cyrtostachys renda, which has been planted by the city in upright clumps along the roadside. I must say, this bamboo stopped me in my tracks. In Europe, it’s not unusual to see bamboo with yellow stems and black stems (and green ones, too, of course) but the letterbox-red stems on the higher growth of this plant look fake. I had to go up and scratch them to make sure they were real.
I was trying really hard to be sensible. I could not face being distracted by exotic plants that had no chance of surviving in hot dry Colmenar, so I headed for the Palm Walk, where I knew I might find species that would work in a Mediterranean climate. There are about fifty species of palm in these botanical gardens; some of them surely would grow on our patch. It was dry enough and high enough. I fancied the Latania lontaroides, which looks like a Bismarckia nobilis but a bit less show-offy, and a very sweet, ruffled fan palm called Licuala grandis, rather delicate and female. And there were several low-growing specimens of Johannesteijsmannia altifrons that I’d never seen before, with big round fan-folded leaves a few inches off the ground which might fit into smaller spaces around the pool.
The bottle palm also held many charms for obvious reasons, and a palm that originated in Sri Lanka, the fish-tailed Dictyosperma album, whose inflorescence is fermented into alcohol called toddy. This must be where we get our ‘hot toddy’ from (whiskey, cloves, brown sugar and lemon with hot water, perfect after a walk through the Wicklow mountains). But this grows too high for my liking. Our plateau already reaches into the heavens and I needed something with more earthly proportions.
Another feature in the Putrajaya gardens that caught my attention but would be totally impractical in Spain is the 170m canopy boardwalk, which takes you across the jungle treetops and shows you just how beautiful the leaf shapes are at the top of trees comfortably fanning out under the sky, unlike their runted brothers and sisters below, reaching up towards the light. It’s as if, at the top of a tree, as in life, those who make it up there relax and say, ‘Look at me up here, isn’t it great?’ Senior executives accused of taking too much from their companies in bonuses seem to cast their colleagues beneath them in a similar shadow.
I believe that the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which can be justly proud of its trees, introduced a canopy walkway some years ago and it has proved to be one of its most popular attractions. I haven’t been on it myself, but after th
is jungle treetop walk, I can see the appeal of the lofty view, denied so often to plant lovers. But dream on, girl. To build a treetop walk you have to have tall trees, and you’re years off that yet. Nonetheless, I put ‘canopy walk’ onto my list for our garden in Spain. What the hell.
Putrajaya does labels really well. They are informative, educational and occasionally entertaining. In true Asian tradition, the first sign you encounter on entering the gardens introduces the rules. No cleaning of carpets, flying of kites, delivering of speeches with a loudhailer. No spitting, urinating or defecating or bringing in any animals except horses. Shortly after, as you walk on, you are met by a label that tells you how to read labels. Once you understand that, you may read the plant labels, which include graphic detail. My favourite, Dryobalanops oblongifolia, informs the reader of detail they may not understand: sweetly scented, bracts fugacious, rarely persistent. Another blurts out detail the reader may not wish to understand: This plant is usually hairy below. Still, if you forgive what’s lost in translation, it’s possible to enjoy the delightful common names. In the fern garden for example, I was entranced by the simple, graphic names: birds’-nest fern, saw fern, peacock fern, crown stag-horn fern, whisk fern. But not so entranced that I’d try to grow them, for attempting to create an expanse of shade on our hillside in Spain would be a challenge bordering on folly.
Not long after, I was enticed into the fernery in Auckland’s botanic gardens, a lovely big dark hole covered by a pergola and cargo net. The species there were not only native to New Zealand, but found worldwide and again, the names entranced me: maidenhair, spleenwort, herd fern, shield fern and brakes. Of course the tree fern had pride of place in New Zealand, not just in the fernery, but everywhere: along roadsides, across hills and down valleys. When my host heard that some of the tree ferns growing in her neighbourhood would fetch thousands of pounds each from nurseries in London, she sucked her cheeks in as if she was eating a pineapple chunk.
The Gardens That Mended a Marriage Page 6