At the Arabian Ranches home of Anup and Isabel Vyas, and their three daughters, Sofia, Leela and Maya, clean, uncluttered lines and the adoption of a less-is-more approach to landscaping has resulted in a garden that delivers when it comes to aesthetics, functionality and sociability, yet requires relatively little maintenance.
When the family took up residence in their Al Mahra home eight-and-a-half years ago, the garden plot was little more than a sandpit. So one of the first things that the family did was install a large, thatched gazebo with a ceiling fan and comfortable seating area.
Isabel explains that over time “the rest of the garden had become tired, the plants weren’t thriving and everything needed a lift”. By chance, her husband drove past a landscaping contractor’s vehicle in the neighbourhood, and met Muhammed Hasnain, the managing director of Bright Vision Landscaping. He asked Hasnain to take a look at their plot and see what improvements could be made.
Working within the Vyases’ budget, Hasnain introduced new elements to the hard landscaping, including Indian sandstone flags, a curved white marble cobblestone border set in concrete, and a low marble-clad wall with a smooth tiled top, which is an ideal spot for candles and lanterns, or just sitting. It also has the added benefit of never requiring a paint job. Elsewhere, feature lighting has been installed around plants for extra drama at night, and an additional layer of texture is added with gravelled areas around the gazebo and barbecue.
The long borders of the garden were already planted with a single species of Ficus to create a uniform line and a tall living hedge. However, this needed attention because the shape had been badly pruned and the lower areas of the planting had lost their density.
“Mr Hasnain made a flower bed for the kitchen garden around the fig tree, with rosemary and curry-leaf plants, and resurrected everything that was dying,” Isabel explains. “He said ‘don’t panic’, and cut everything back. He said it would all be revived just as soon as the weather cooled down, and already new signs of growth are becoming evident.”
Hasnain removed a couple of trees from the garden that he felt weren’t good for the ground, and the remaining planting – which includes cycads, a lemon tree, a Ficus topiary, bougainvillaea, a mature flame tree, frangipanis and a fig tree – were all given attention and care and left in situ. He introduced a couple more fruit trees to the scheme, including a pomegranate and mango, and added terracotta pots holding Spanish cacti.
“What was really nice about Mr Hasnain is that he got stuck in and wanted to revive the existing plants, instead of taking them out,” says Isabel. “He works with his guys, he eats with his guys, and even when he’s got his suit on, he will sometimes start digging and show them what needs to be done if anybody is doing anything wrong. We noticed he treats workers really nicely, and they will do anything for him.
“I think good gardeners are hard to find, as I don’t think many of them are taught. It can be classed as labouring and not skilled, when really it is an art form, and you need to be knowledgeable about plants and know how to look after them.”
Best of all, the landscaping and updated planting scheme were delivered within one week of the team commencing work at the property.
Hasnain came to Dubai from Islamabad, Pakistan, more than 18 years ago, and had worked in a number of sectors before his career in landscaping took off.
“I have plant knowledge from the last 18 years,” he explains, “because when I finished my office job I would go to my uncle’s shop, Hazeem Flower Trading on Jumeirah Beach Road, and sit where they were selling indoor and outdoor plants.
“There were so many different nationalities coming into the shop, and they were complaining that the plants in their gardens kept dying. My uncle explained that this is because of the gardener or the garden, and when you are buying a very expensive plant, if your gardener doesn’t know where it should go or how to care for it, it won’t live.
“There was a Lebanese lady living in Jumeirah, and she was spending a lot of money at my uncle’s shop, and she asked if I could come and explain some things to her gardener. When I was there, I saw where he was planting, and I asked him to dig around the plants with his shovel. I found that there were only small stones around the roots, so I suggested that he dig out two or three more feet and put new soil in the area. She never came to complain in the shop again, and still comes to buy smaller plants and flowers, and is very happy. She had been living in that house for 10 to 15 years, and all that time her gardener was not digging properly, and just saying that it was the plants that were no good.
“When I was with my uncle, we talked about how I had a passion for gardening. I love gardening, and I like having plants in my hands and working with them. So I said to my uncle that I wanted to leave my job and start a gardening-and-landscaping business, which I did 18 months ago. I now also have a nursery at Warsan, where I am cultivating and importing plants for the business”.
In addition to the landscaping, Hasnain and his team have started installing swimming pools, and have worked on the Polo Homes, which back on to the Dubai Polo & Equestrian Club.
“I like planting and working with my people, telling them how to work, because I know about the conditions in the UAE, and I know which plants are going to do well and which flowers will work here. For example, there are some grasses in the United States and in England, which work there, but here the conditions are so different because of the heat. The biggest challenge here is maintaining the green of the garden. I am working across almost 45 villas, and in my gardens you will not see dead grass anywhere.”
Hasnain takes pride in the fact that he has never rung doorbells or sent out leaflets to promote his company, and that all his business has been through word of mouth. “People see the gardens, and they like the gardens, and then they hear about me.”
In addition to protecting gardens from the extremes of the UAE’s summer heat, Hasnain says that his second-biggest challenge lies with the quality of the soil that’s put down as the foundation for so many gardens here. Al Ain, for example, has very good soil, as does Fujairah, but soil nearer the coast tends to have a higher salt content, which isn’t good for plants. An additional problem with many gardens is that building rubble isn’t always removed from site when construction is completed, and you can dig down and find that plants are trying to grow among broken concrete and screed.
“A garden such as this would require a lorry full of soil,” says Hasnain of the Vyas plot. “We then level it and use fertiliser, lay the irrigation and feed with manure. Then we lay the grass according to our customers’ requirement. Some like the carpet grass, which is ready to use straight away, others prefer the plug-in grass, which is more cost-effective, but it takes a little longer for it to become established. Some companies cut and prune with machines, but we like to do this by hand, because the machines get hot and they can burn the leaves.
“My favourite plant is the frangipani tree, because the flower and the smell are both so nice. My second favourite one is night queen [Cestrum nocturnum], because when you put it around your garden, the smell is so amazing at night that even your neighbours will be asking you what it is.” Hasnain has planted one in the corner of the Vyases’ plot with the same expectations.
Hasnain and his team will continue to maintain the garden, and his customer care even extends to picking figs from the Vyases’ tree and leaving them in a little bag in the garage. The family’s previous gardeners had always maintained that their tree wasn’t producing fruit, despite its healthy buds, but they have now discovered, with Hasnain’s help, that the gardeners had been eating them all along.
Bright Vision Landscaping can be contacted on 050 585 0962.
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