Creating a garden in India

One of my most ambitious projects has been the creation of a landscaped garden near Gorkana on the coast of the Arabian Sea in south west India.

The Western Ghats dominate the landscape, affecting the local weather and this beautiful place is also one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots.  Mindful of this I was determined to make the property an environmental haven with minimal artifice. The rural site is about 28 acres in size, on a peninsula of land that embraces the principles of vastu shastra, ancient concepts to be used as guidance to improve the quality of life.  It is believed that every piece of land or building has a soul of its own.  Buildings, water bodies and gardens should achieve harmony with nature.  It was good to use some of these elements. The climate is dry coastal and the soil laterite.  Laterite is rich in iron oxide, has a high clay content and is a strong orange colour that can never completely be washed off clothes. When our clients bought the property it had an area of farmed coconuts and betel nuts and an acacia plantation with the occasional forest tree. One of the first things we had to do was to secure official permission to remove most of the acacia. We did this tranche by tranche, identifying suitable forest trees to keep and then encouraging these weedy suppressed trees to grow into large trees they are today, many of which now look decades old.   My husband, Philip, (an architect) and I worked together beginning with site clearance and shaping the site, revealing its hidden and overgrown treasures.  We found a huge banyan that was sorely neglected and many of its branches hd been hacked off.  Removal of surrounding trees and lianas, manuring the soil around the base has transformed the tree.  New aerial roots are growing fast which is fantastic to see.  It’s now a veritable cathedral of plants providing homes for epiphytes and ferns. Clearance of some areas wasn’t always easy as the workers would say that a goddess lived in a certain tree or rock and refused to do the work.  We were very lucky to have our colleague Leric working with us who armed with local knowledge, language (there are three different dialects spoken in addition to Kannada), his great stamina for work and boundless charm made it possible to gain access to the site on a newly built road through the surrounding forest and State cashew plantations. After the initial clearance on one hillside now known as the Sarah Syborn Memorial Slope as I was nearly killed by falling trees, snakes and sheer effort, I set to work planting an arboretum featuring numerous and unusual indigenous trees that flower and fruit attracting many more birds and insects that the acacia. The trees have grown incredibly well and included Gulmohrs, spathodea, saraca indica, brownea, jacaranda, schefflera, butea (flame of the forest), lagerstroemia and the gloriously named Rusty Shield Bearer that provides yellow flowers throughout the dry season. Now the birdlife is increasing and becoming more varied. There are babblers, nectar feeders, bee eaters, flycatchers, kingfishers, sunbirds and parakeets to name a few and my greatest pleasure is the malabar hornbill making its noisy presence on site as it’s habitat is threatened and overall numbers are reduced in this region.   I did a great deal of research on the climate, soil and learnt from local knowledge. Much of what is planted is drought tolerant or fairly drought tolerant.  Sustainability is essential. so we built rainwater collection and storage tanks against a hillside and the house is built on top of these invaluable tanks which fill up during the monsoon. Using planting pits and composted organic matter and rotted cow manure to improve the soil has been a great success. Interestingly, cow manure is difficult to obtain as there are many other uses for it in India - fuel for cooking fires, face powder for religious festivals and a recent start-up is using dung soap and candles for urban dwellers homesick for their villages. Grass areas are kept to a minimum and alternatives to grass have been used, for example, zaphranos lily that looks as green as grass, requires far less water and yet produces beautiful white or pink flowers throughout the year. The property has kept its original coconut and betel nut farm, forest gardens added and a more domestic garden planted by the house now building has finished. The narrative thread is that of welcome using the traditional colours of red and yellow from the entrance to the main house. I planted scent as often as possible.  This isn’t difficult in India and I used are kanaga, champak (a member of the magnolia family) and milliingtonia trees near the house, spider lilies, cestrum nocturnal (queen of the night), many different jasmines and of course plumeria.  There are several different types of plumeria planted so that at any one time there will be some flowering: local plumeria rubra or temple tree, plumeria pudica (fiddle leaf plumeria) and plumeria obtusa (Singaporensis). The trees and plants were sourced from all over India; nurseries near Bangalore, Udupi, Rajamundary and via an excellent nurseryman called Mr. Muni from Trivandrum. I have only just scratched the surface of the local ethnobotany and find it constantly fascinating. I have learned so much over the years of making this garden not least patience, resilience particularly in the monsoon and great heat that made me feel like gardening was a new Olympic sport.  My teams have shown me great kindness, generosity and support without which this garden wouldn’t exist.