The Gardens That Mended a Marriage

by Karen Moloney

  I have no doubt that our mountain will continue to slip, fall and decay, but she will always revive. She is viable, capable of sustaining life, indeed teeming with the life of the many ecosystems she begets. You could argue that she drinks, sweats, breathes in and out as much as we humans do. The west wind and the heavy winter rains will continue to attack her. From time to time she will succumb, but she will always be there.

  So there we have it. My mother started it all with, ‘You should put a hairnet over your slipping hillside.’ Stan came up with the idea of planting the hillside to stabilise the soil. Jennie confused us with advice to put in small seedlings of ground cover. The Professor provided us with a long-term plan to colonise the scree and nourish the soil. Muscle Manuel nearly made us napalm it into oblivion. But nature has decided she will accept our offering. Long may she remain forgiving.

  ‘What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.’ Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

  CHAPTER SEVEN: WAITING

  OUR focus was on shoring up the mountain. However, paying that much attention to a costly and, we thought, imminent danger meant that we lost our peripheral vision. The events going on in the wider world assumed less importance and we failed to see storm clouds gathering over the place that was to prove our nemesis: the town hall.

  On return to London we began the first of several months’ wait. We sat tight and waited for the results of the council elections. The incumbents won. However, they had been rattled by their experience of the election and all planning business seemed to grind to a halt. We waited for a few months more. Then a few more. Enquiries to Marcel yielded nothing more than, ‘It’s on the mayor’s desk. He has assured me he will get round to it.’ But as the months dragged on, it became apparent that the mayor had no intention of doing anything about it. Our application to proceed to the next stage and build the rest of our house might have been a mere fallen hair on the shoulder of his navy blazer that he couldn’t be bothered to pick off. We were nothing to him. In fact, the longer the mayor left us with no news, the less trouble we were to him. If he granted us permission, he would have his political rivals goading him about it. If he refused permission, he’d have our lawyer on his case. The best thing was for him to do nothing. And so he did. For months.

  Cambridge University Botanic Garden

  In the meantime, there was nothing for us to do but get on with life in England. Months passed. My work took me to Cambridge the following winter and one morning, as the dawn broke, I wrapped myself up in a large woolly jumper, hat, gloves, sweat pants, sloppy-joe socks, gilet, put on my running headphones - the ones that have secure loops around my ears - and jogged out into the cold East Anglian darkness. The frost smacked me in the face and took my breath away. What a contrast to throwing open our doors in Colmenar and being met by the gentle fragrance of the awakening hillside.

  After five minutes, I had crossed the Churchill College fields, over Madingley Road and onto St John’s cricket pitch. Then it started snowing. Gentle, flat flakes, dampening the mud and coating everything with a blanket of white felt.

  On the lane up towards the Backs, there were bunches of snowdrops, shivering slightly as the snowflakes landed on their heads and settled around them like a doily. I had never really appreciated snowdrops (even though they heralded the spring) but these brave little things bobbed and trembled as the snow fell upon them and somehow gave me strength to continue the fight.

  Later that afternoon I stole an hour and drove over to visit the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. I wasn’t sure if this garden was on my list of gardens to see before I die, but as it was so close… There, snuggled under bare trees and browned herbaceous shrubs, I found clouds of snowdrops spread across the earth like rumpled white hearthrugs of different sizes, at least five varieties, the biggest and boldest of which was Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’, a plump, turgid variety at least 6 inches high and the older cousin to the small specimens that had given me heart that morning.

  Apart from the snowdrops, the outside gardens seemed bare and uninteresting and I was disappointed. Additionally, I was underdressed in a skirt, heels and a jacket so headed inside to shelter in the warmth of the glasshouses. Within minutes my sourness dissolved as I read the descriptions, labels and posters describing the exhibits, written with the scrupulousness expected of an academic institution and the decency of natural scientists. One interesting story in the Ocean Islands room examined the problem of islands. To be more specific, the threat to the flora and fauna of islands in the middle of oceans when humans colonise them.

  The island of St Helena, one of the most remote places on Earth (the nearest land mass to St Helena being 2,000 kilometres away), is a case in point. In 1502, the Portuguese stumbled on St Helena as they crossed the Atlantic and decided to use it as a base for supplies to feed their growing empire to the west. They introduced vegetables and livestock and began a thriving horticultural and meat industry. Unfortunately, they introduced a tasty snack for sailors – goats – that roamed the island, foraging and getting fat until it was time to be rounded up and slaughtered in the service of their country. These goats were ravenous and within no time had completely destroyed many species of unique plants found nowhere else on the planet. The St Helena ebony (Trochetiopsis ebenus), a pretty shrub with a white flower, which once formed vast forests across the island, was destroyed. The greedy goats loved it.

  By 1850 it was thought to be extinct, but then, thirty years ago, an eagle-eyed botanist spotted two bushes high up on a cliff face clinging to the rocks. Some intrepid soul - I suspect not the botanist - climbed up the cliff and carefully removed samples. The botanist took these cuttings, bagged and labeled them, brought them back to Cambridge and propagated them. The survival of the St Helena ebony was assured. In front of me stood the evidence – a live plant.

  A botanical garden isn’t only a pleasure garden but an opportunity for scholars to communicate their work with us if we’ll listen, to remind us that in conserving species, they are not only maintaining the diversity of the nine million or so other species on planet earth who live with us, but are clambering up cliff faces, sealing precious DNA into plastic bags and bending down to examine tiny pots on laboratory benches for signs of growth in a plant not seen for two hundred years. A botanical garden somehow bridges that space between the natural scientist and Joe Public. It was certainly worth the hour.

  As the snowdrops of Cambridge rattled their little heads, my mind drifted to Colmenar. I wanted to know if the sick almond trees that Manuel had been treating were recovered and blossoming along with their brothers. I wanted to know if the citrus trees in the Persian garden were still struggling in the exposure of the west winds. I wanted to know if the grasses we had planted were still there, if we would ever see them again and enjoy their bursts of dancing in the setting sun. I yearned for my garden. Perhaps a visit soon!

  Building the second wing

  Throughout the year Stan had been silent on the matter of planning permission. It was as if mentioning it was accusing him of inattention, so I didn’t. But nothing could have been further from the truth. I knew that he was thinking about it all the time. He was not sleeping as he struggled to know what more he could do. He mailed Marcel and Muscle Manuel constantly. He phoned George for ideas. He found a British lawyer who understood the planning processes and was willing to take on cases like ours.

  Eventually, one cold spring day, he told me, ‘We’re going to build the east wing.’

  ‘Oh really? What, just like that?’

  ‘Yes. Marcel has said that the inspectors have seen it, not objected, and that our planning permission covers the size of the new wing, so we’re going ahead.’

  ‘Great! If you’re sure…’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ He turned away.

  So Muscle Manuel began again, and before long the east wing, to match the west wing, was up and painted and now, finally, the house looked like the drawings and the
model. But somehow, the pride we had felt on completion of the first wing was not matched by the second. It was as if we’d built it with white knuckles and clenched teeth.

  Then more stasis. Months followed where we spoke about everything but our dream. It was as if it had never happened, as if I had never asked, ‘You’re an architect, aren’t you? Where’s my house?’ and he had never presented me with the model. It seemed that our lives had taken the course we’d feared, we had lost our children and that void stretched out before us as it does before all empty nesters. What were we to do? We felt we were back where we’d started.

  Treat as annual

  To fill time as we waited, we distracted ourselves with a trip to the Gulf. We both had business to do there. Stan had arrived the day before me, so I hurried to catch up with him and enjoy some of the very best United Arab Emirates hospitality and that endless sunshine.

  It takes about an hour to drive from Abu Dhabi airport to Dubai. The road is wide and long and straight and rather dull. At night, it is dimly lit by streetlights and the monotony is broken every few miles by the green neon and sparkling white lights of a mosque, the minaret rising like a beacon in the sand. But that morning, as I saw it for the first time in daylight, there was far more on display than I thought. The planners had livened up the road landscaping to avoid the cliché of palm trees, which here in the Gulf, as much as anywhere in the Middle East, are ubiquitous by the roadside. They had been rejected in favour of acacia trees, low and fluffy, which give the landscape more of an indigenous, womb-like feel. Lovely!

  A solitary camel walked majestically through the sand to my left. For ‘health and safety’ reasons along a considerable section of this road they’ve erected a camel-proof fence to stop the creatures wandering onto the highway as, although a few are feisty, most camels are languid. After too many fatal accidents in which camels had stood in the middle of the highway wondering why cars were skidding around them, piling up and killing people, the authorities had decided to do something. I’m not sure whose side the law is on when a car kills a reindeer in Lapland or an elk in Nova Scotia, but ancient laws in the Arabian peninsular insist that if a camel wanders into your path and you kill it, you pay for it. Now that the fence has been erected you don’t have to pay if you kill the camel.

  That day, my taxi driver spoke a little English but I couldn’t understand him, so his attempts to practice on me proved useless. Usually, I’m the first to engage in conversation with taxi drivers, whatever country I’m in. Obviously I will start, as a resident of the UK, with an enquiry about the weather and use that as an entrée into the subject of gardening.

  ‘Any rain fallen recently?’ is usually a good one.

  Depending on the driver’s response, I will express delight or disappointment in his good or bad fortune and then reciprocate that rain has or hasn’t fallen on my own London garden for days/weeks. If I hear regret that he spends too long each day in his taxi for him to care for his garden as he would like, then I always ask ‘What kind of garden do you have?’ And then we’re off on a conversation. Once we have established the full extent of his planting, the size of his patch, the amount of lawn, etc., then we move on to top seasonal tips. I’ve learned when’s the best month to harvest potatoes in Burgundy, how to pick out the nuts from pine cones to make pesto in Pisa and the best time of the day to use your hover mower in Houston. If the driver expresses little interest in gardening, I turn to football, about which I know far less, but that’s not the point. In fact, it’s better if I don’t divulge any knowledge at all, because the driver just needs to know that my husband is a Manchester United fan, then he’s off on a rant.

  That morning, an enquiry into the possibility of rain, when I knew it wouldn’t for the next nine months, was futile and my interrogation of the driver’s soccer allegiances brought me nothing, so I slumped back silently in my seat and thought about which bikini to wear when I hit the pool.

  Stan was waiting for me on a lounger, cool as ever.

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Camels on the road.’

  ‘Languid?’

  ‘Yep.’

  That just about completed our conversation for the day. We settled into a good read, and after cooking in the sun for a few hours, one of us may have said, ‘Fancy a cocktail under that red cabana on the beach?’

  The following day I watched a small wiry Indian man harvest dates. Dates were something I was very interested in. One day, we would have tons of them in our courtyard in Spain. It was a lesson in consummate physical skill. He set about his task quietly, working in tandem with his colleague, who watched from beneath, collected the harvest and swept up the debris. From time to time his colleague below gazed up at the master as if to say ‘One day I’ll be a harvester.’ But then retreated into the shade, perhaps thinking ‘But not today, it’s too hot.’ I watched them from the comfort of my lounger wondering if one day I might have to harvest our dates. If I watched closely, I might pick up some tips.

  The temperature that day was in the low 40s C so actually standing up was suicidal; staying in or near water was about the only way to remain alive. I lay back down on my lounger and opened one eye.

  First the harvester tied a long jute sling loosely around his waist and looped it around the tree and climbed by throwing the loop of rope upwards and walking up the tree at an angle, the wide part of the sling supporting the small of his back. It only took him five or so throws of the sling to reach the top, the trunk of this palm being about 40 feet high. I wondered how long it took him to master that throw. He made it look as easy as hoola-hooping.

  Once high amongst the fronds, he hacked off the smaller leaves at the base of several others to make space so he could move freely through the mass at the top of the tree. Then he abandoned his sling and squatted on the fronds close to the crown. These fronds were springy and bent under his slight weight, but he looked so sure-footed that nothing could have dislodged him. Next he chopped off the date fronds and threw them out into the leaves of the palms so that they slid gently down to the ground to be collected by his colleague. Finally he trimmed the dry brown husks at the base of the fronds. The effect was just the same as any good pruning or tree surgery - to open up the crown to light and air; let it breathe and, presumably, produce more dates. I hastily revised my aspirations. I could never do it.

  The harvest was loaded up by his colleague onto a kind of shopping trolley, which I worried was destined for disposal in the bin yard, or at best that the fronds and dates would be tossed into the compost heap. There seemed to be so many dates across the Middle East, they couldn’t possibly use them all. When I roused myself onto my elbows and enquired, he told me that the harvest of dates – green, orange and yellow – would first need to be dried, but then in two or three months would be ready to eat. So no, they were not going to be thrown away.

  The gardens around the rest of the property were beautifully maintained, but I noticed the landscapers had made mistakes in their design. I remember the last time I had been there, maybe four years before, the path to the beach was fringed with mature, soft Pennisetum messiacum (bunny tails). Their arched flowers dropped onto the walkway and kissed your feet as you passed by, which may have been the reason for them being removed. The ground cover they had planted instead was hard, tidy and obedient and wouldn’t dare touch the guests. Designers love Pennisetum messiacum, but it is high-maintenance and needs replacing, whatever it says on the label. Indeed, one I purchased last year for my London garden came with a warning not to expect a second year. ‘Treat as annual’ it said boldly. Perhaps that should be a motto for some human relationships. A good reminder for our children, maybe, both of whom were suffering their first heartbreaks. Then perhaps Lottie wouldn’t be so devastated when he didn’t phone or Matthew would understand when she slipped out of his life.

  Waiting for divine intervention

  One of Stan’s more eccentric ideas at this time was to begin purchasing statues of saints to pla
ce along the walkway we’d planned from the south end down to the oak tree - rather like the Stations of the Cross, to give a purpose to the meandering path. Throughout the summer of 2008, this idea of the ‘Stations of the Saints’ gathered momentum. Basically, it would consist of twelve patron saints, to be chosen by us, representing causes we cared about. They would be placed in positions along the path where walkers could stop and contemplate the holy images as they meandered down the hill towards the oak tree. Or, depending upon the events that had befallen them that day or week, could rush straight to their chosen saint and prostrate themselves at his or her feet to plead intercession or give thanks.

  Stan returned from Tangiers a few weeks later with his first saint… the Virgin Mary. Not being a Catholic and never having been schooled in such things, he was unaware that the Mother of God is not traditionally considered a patron saint, although I suppose she could lay claim to sainthood on account of her being the first and only target of Immaculate Conception (as far as we know, anyway). But she was perfect, and even if she wasn’t technically a saint, she looked the part; moulded in quality plastic, about 30 inches high, with liberal gold and blue paint, a flowing gown, a plump baby Jesus in her arms and an expression of pious modesty.

  Other saints followed that spring, including our favourites:

  • St Christopher, obviously, being the patron saint of travellers and the patron saint of carriers of heavy children (Lottie was born weighing 9lbs 4oz)

  • St Fiacre. The Irish monk, herbalist and patron saint of gardening, those suffering from sexually transmitted diseases and fistulas - and taxi drivers (because carriages in Paris were stationed at the Hotel de St Fiacre and known as ‘Fiacre cabs’).