Re: Bella Tuscany

Dear Jan--
--thank you for your interest in my Corfu (USDA zone equivalent 10) garden.  I think of it more as my "land" since only one smallish part of it is a flower garden--the rest consists of centuries-old olive trees, a vineyard, a pine and cypress grove, a vegetable garden, a small fruit-orchard, a mixed citrus and olive orchard and several semi-wild and wild areas.
-- We make our own olive-oil and wine. We dry tomatoes, artichokes and eggplants, as well as figs, and make the potent local "meze" of pounded dried figs, ouzo and black pepper. I've been experimenting with herbal "digestive" liqueurs (I don't buy the masochistic theory that they have to taste awful in order to work) and have had a great deal of success with wild thyme and verbena.  This summer I'll experiment with various mints.
--The "cycladic chair" Sally Razelou mentions in her article is an original sculpture by the great Greek sculptor Kapralos.  I can attach a photograph for anyone who wants to see it.  We refer to it as "the throne" and it's surprisingly comfortable.
--I bought the land, including a 200 year-old Tuscan style farmhouse 27 years ago, and spent the first few years putting all my energy into restoring the house and fortifying the terracing so our topsoil wouldn't disappear.  When I first turned my attention to the garden I made the typical mistake of pouring a lot of effort into realizing a "dream-vision" of a cottage-garden consisting of the kinds of plants that had no intention of growing on our poor rocky soil in the punishing Summer sun--delphiniums and roses, for example.  I failed again and again, and attributed my failure to the fact that I wasn't there year-round to keep everything going.
--About fifteen years ago I saw the light and started focusing on Mediterranean plants.  Except for one raised annual bed that consumes about half of our total compost produce every year, we've been proceeding on the basis of shrubs and perrenials suited to our climate.  My original idea was to aquire many different varieties of whatever was happy there, and now we have many different rosemaries and scented pelargonia, and salvia, and thyme, and cistus and nerium oleander.   Our only roses are unnamed local heirlooms from cuttings. In the last few years I've been experimenting with Australian, Californian and Southafrican natives, and different kinds of bulbs.  My present idee fixe is to have some success with lavenders since I love them and they are suited to our conditions, so there's no reason why we should be failing.
--The property has an interesting horticultural history, in that I did not buy it from the original Greek owners but from an English couple who had made their home there for several years.  Their name was Osler.  When the name of Mirabel Osler began to appear in horticultural publications after the publication of A Gentle Plea For Chaos, I began to devour everything she wrote hoping for references to her garden in Corfu, and some record of what they planted.  Sadly all the references have been to her English gardens.  I'd love to know whether the Scilla Peruviana was their import (if not, how did it get there in the wild?) and whether they planted the pseudoacacias and the philadelphus.  I wish that when they planted the pine and cypress grove they hadn't done it in neat rows...
--Going further back, the local noble family that owned the property at the turn of the century (it was then triple the size and all vineyeards) and spent a month every summer there, had a young English woman as a houseguest.  She was a gifted watercolourist, and after her stay published a book called  An Artist in Corfu, describing her stay.  It contains several colour plates one of which is our walled garden, dripping with wisteria, and looking very much as it does now in April, with the combination of Wisteria and local(?) bearded irises.  I have a copy and it's one of my most precious belongings.
--I'm sorry if I carried on for too long, but this is my favourite subject...
Cali Doxiadis
 

Jan Smithen wrote:

Thanks Cali,
    For your recomendation of the new Frances Mayes book. (I love rigid and geometric!) I'm ordering it and looking forward to a better book. I found I lost interest in the first one about 2/3s of the way through. Perhaps if I'd been familiar with the ancient Etruscian sites she visited, it would have meant more to me.

    I was delighted with the description of your garden on Corfu in the July, 2000 edition of "The Mediterranean Garden". I wished it was more complete. Even though you've given a little taste of it on the "Lavender list", I hope you have the time to give us all a better "walk through". I'm particularly intrigued by your Cycladic chair, "looking out to sea over a broad meadow". Please tell us all about it.
Jan Smithen

Cali Doxiadis wrote:

Hello everyone--
--I just finished reading Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes and enjoyed it even more than the first one; it's more thoughtful and more poetic.  There is a chapter about planning her garden after researching classic Italian garden-design (which I'd always dismissed as too rigid and geometrical for my taste) which I found particularly thought-provoking.  I think that as well as other parts of the book might be of particular interest to listers.
Cali Doxiadis
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Jan Smithen,
Upland, California

jansmithen@earthlink.net
Sunset zone : 19
USDA zone   : 10

http://home.earthlink.net/~jansmithen/

Visit the Los Angeles County Arboretum
Victorian Rose Garden website at:
http://victorian-rose.org/
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