The verandah is covered in climbers called Lady Slipers and Salandra or Cup of gold. Photo/Margaretta wa Gacheru
By Margaretta wa Gacheru
In Summary
- Painting has always been Geraldine Robarts’ love, but she’s equally passionate about gardening.
Geraldine Robarts didn’t discover she had a
green thumb until she went to teach fine art at Makerere University in
the 1960s. But the same year she went to Uganda, she created her very
first garden, went ahead to win an award from the Uganda Horticulture
Society and she has been gardening ever since.
“I found that painting and gardening have a lot in
common,’ says Geraldine, who is an acclaimed painter. “They’re both
about finding beauty in nature and about selecting colours that go
together.’
Describing gardening as her passion, Geraldine
never took a course in landscape gardening, but looking at her
exquisitely eclectic gardens – she has several in her shamba in Karen –
one could easily assume she had an advanced degree in landscaping.
Peter Greensmith
“ I was an avid disciple of the late Peter
Greensmith, [the British horticulturalist who came to Kenya to work and
ended up staying] from whom I got almost half of my plants and a great
deal of my knowledge about them,” she adds.
The rest of her plants have come from cuttings which she collects and then carefully cultivates, using only natural fertilizers.
“Twice a year, we spread organic compost that we
generate on a daily basis in our home. We also spread dried horse manure
that we get from our neighbours up the road who have the biggest stable
of steeple jumpers in Kenya. That’s why our plants are so healthy,” she
says.
Coming to Kenya to teach at Kenyatta University in
1972, Geraldine’s family soon decided to settle here and bought 17
acres of land in Karen when land in the area was still affordable.
“But with four children in school overseas, we had
no choice but to sell most of that property,” says Geraldine who
remained with almost three acres that she still owns todate.
Rich variety
That is where she’s been creating lush, dense and
colourful ‘gardens within gardens’ ever since. She’s got a spacious
bamboo garden which also has a rich variety of other trees, flowers and
shrubs in it – including everything from a Pride of Bolivia tree and a
Yellow Candle tree to the Fichus Nitida tree (a relative of the Mugumu
or Fig tree) which she planted more than 40 years ago!
She’s also got several rock gardens filled with
assorted succulents, and an array of other gardens filled with orchids,
ferns, cactus, chrysanthemums, bougainvillea, and all sorts of Latin
named plants that I won’t enumerate. She’s even got lemon and papaya
trees in the vegetable garden that’s maintained by her spouse Mike
Fairhead.
Having planted literally thousands of both
indigenous and exotic flowers, trees, succulents and shrubs since she
settled down on acreage that had once been part of Karen Blixen’s coffee
plantation, Geraldine says she planted almost all the vegetation in her
gardens – with some assistance from her household staff.
“There were a half a dozen indigenous rainforest
trees in the driveway when we arrived and they are still there. Also,
there were three trees that had been planted by Karen Blixen years
earlier which we found at the same time: two Jacarandas [which are now
around 55 feet tall] and one huge Thorn Tree which was felled during a
torrential storm some years ago.
“We loved that tree, but after we dug up all its
roots, we found the hole was so deep, we had little choice but to put in
a swimming pool, “says Geraldine explaining why she has potted plants,
specifically ornamental palms, all around the pool. “It’s to offset the
hard effect of the cement,” she explains.
No comments :
Post a Comment