My parents’ garden in Limassol, Cyprus, is one of my favourite places in the world. It’s a space packed with memories – of my father plucking flowers from his rose garden and presenting them to my mother with a romantic flourish, of afternoons whiled away with old friends, of rowdy barbecues, quiet family get-togethers and landmark celebrations.
It’s also a sanctuary for countless animals: cats and dogs abandoned at the front gate and reluctantly taken in; migrating swallows that return year-after-year to nest in the same spots; an oversized terrapin that wallows in the pond and promises to outlive us all; and even an errant hedgehog that has converted a corner of the garage into his private lair.
My parents moved into their current home in December 2003, during a particularly wet Cypriot winter (and while I had already fled the nest by that time, it is still as much of a refuge for me as it is for that tiresome hedgehog). The house is built on agricultural land on the outskirts of town and strict planning laws dictated that only 6 per cent of the total plot could be developed. Which, on that cold day in December, left my parents with more than 3,000 square metres of muddy field to contend with.
With no formal training in landscape design and limited prior gardening experience, my father has spent the past 12 years almost single-handedly transforming those barren acres into a unique garden full of quirky features and personal touches.
He has lugged and laid paving slabs, carted bags of top soil in his now-knackered wheelbarrow, planted, tended and pruned trees, battled over-zealous bougainvillea and rose bushes, and destroyed an indeterminable number of mowers trying to keep his lawn in check.
Sometimes the rest of us were called in for back-up. Under duress, my mother and I once spent a whole afternoon planting tiny hedglings at 30cm intervals – these now form a three-metre-high boundary hedge that encircles the property and makes me feel ever-so-slightly smug every time I see it. And if a family outing ever took us past a rocky beach, we would stop, pile out of the car and pick up armfuls of grey and white pebbles, which my father has since used to create an intricate rockery.
The beauty of any garden lies in the fact that it is a constantly evolving thing. And for me, this garden is a particularly enticing mix of ideas, plants and features lovingly gathered over the course of many years.
Every time I go home, there is something new to see – the rockery, complete after so many years of collective effort, a new gazebo or eating area, a hammock struck from the citrus trees, or a statue of a Greek goddess staring nonchalantly out from one end of the garden. At the centre of it all lies an orchard full of Mediterranean treats – sweet, perfectly pink pomegranates, luscious figs, shiny lemons and olives that, once ripe, rain from the trees and have to be gathered by our neighbours, who have the necessary skills to transform them into hearty bottles of handmade olive oil.
My father has taught me many lessons over the years, but for me, this garden is a symbol of some of his most admirable qualities: his quiet creativity – unbecoming, almost, of an arbitration lawyer; his endless patience and strong work ethic; and his ability to take joy in the simplest of tasks.
Qualities that I hope to emulate in my own garden somewhere, someday.
Selina Denman is the editor of Home&Garden.
