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Two eccentric pal make wonderfully idiosyncratic gardens an hour ’s length aside on an enchanted island off the tip of India . Sibling contention ? Perhaps . The results : outstanding . I visited both gardens recently , unprepared not only for their beauty and originality but for the classifiable nature of the two hands ’s designs , each as revealing as diary entries . The brothers , glorious in their own room and as dissimilar from one another as their garden , are gone . But here , in vernal splendor , the two document of their lives flower on .
Japanese moon gate at Brief Garden . Photo by : Luca Tettoni / Corbis . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF THIS GARDEN
The island is Sri Lanka , often described as a teardrop hanging off India ’s southern seacoast . Slightly larger than West Virginia , the former Portuguese , Dutch , and British colony , lately torn by civil state of war , retain the staples of a colonial - era heaven — jungle , tea plantations , beaches , colorful city , ancient ruin and careen formations , spice in the breeze , and C of Buddhistic shrines and temple . In this stunning tropic landscape , near the southern coastal townspeople of Bentota , the pal Geoffrey and Bevis Bawa chip at out the two garden that have become their legacies .
Sri Lanka ’s is a diverse refinement , home to Veddas , Tamils , Burghers , and Moors , lie with locally as Muslims . The Bawa kinsperson was connected to the wealthy , elect Burgher society , whose ancestry can be trace to 17th - century Europeans who root in Ceylon ( as the island was name before 1972 ) . Geoffrey and Bevis ’ father ’s ancestry was British and Muslim ; their female parent was of European and Singhalese stock . ( Sri Lankan - born author Michael Ondaatje , who comes from a Burgher kinsperson , write vividly about this innocent - spirited , hedonistic universe in his memoir , Running in the Family . )
Bevis ’ modest house , paint a soft apricot with terra cotta tile , allows the hobo camp in through wood - paneled double doors . Photo by : Dominic Sansoni . SEE MORE PHOTOS OF THIS GARDEN
Geoffrey ( 1919 - 2003 ) is far well known than his crony . After training in England to be a lawyer , he wrench to architecture . He designed the island ’s Parliament complex as well as many other public building but made his reputation with his hotels , like the geographical mile - longHeritance Kandalamaoutside of Dambulla , which seems to grow out of the hobo camp , and theJetwing Lighthousein the coastal city of Galle . Geoffrey ’s practice of flux aboriginal materials with international modernist style has become hugely influential around the world .
Geoffrey get down his garden , calledLunuganga , in the late forties . Sited on a former rubber grove , its main feature is a declamatory lake at the bottom of a steep hill . The English landscape painting movement heavily tempt his plan . all-encompassing wrapping of lawn reach toward the lake from the original house ( now a hotel ) , dot with Frisian cows ( Geoffrey loved black and whitened everywhere and adore Dalmatian dogs ) , water gardens , and miniature Elmer Reizenstein paddies . A crenelated folly , prettily painted guest cottage , and artfully place statuary add to the English flavour .
Geoffrey had no dubiousness about the relationship between a couturier and his garden . His school of thought was dedicated to the notion of human beings ’s mastery over nature ; he moved H2O , hills , and tree diagram without disinclination . “ The long vista to the south ended with the tabernacle , ” Geoffrey compose , “ but in the halfway aloofness was a rooftree with a splendid ancient moonamal tree , and when I placed a large Chinese jar under it , the script of humankind was established in this middle distance . ” Yet Geoffrey ’s star was to create a landscape so naturalistic that it could hardly be identified as man - made . Ondaatje tells the storey of a visitor to Lunuganga exclaiming , “ But Mr. Bawa , would n’t this be a endearing place to turn into a garden ? ” Geoffrey said this was the good compliment he ever get .
Bevis Bawa ( 1909 - 1992 ) used his authority in a different fashion . Called theBrief Gardenbecause his Padre purchased the solid ground after a successful legal legal brief , Bevis ’ garden is farther inland than his brother ’s , and though it adopt the same tropical landscape , it reflects Bevis ’ unruly disposition and fooling approach to living .
A wall separates meadow and heavily found bank . pic by : Dominic Sansoni . SEE MORE photo OF THIS GARDEN
Ten year sure-enough than Geoffrey and openhanded at 6 foot 7 inches , Bevis volunteer for the Ceylon Light Infantry , serving until his esthetic sideline and his garden won the day . Bevis started his garden ( also a former rubber plantation ) in 1929 , almost 20 age before his brother . His design follows narrow winding nerve tract through heavy tropical foliage , runs up and down slopes , then of a sudden open up onto a stairway , a patio , a pond , or a strategically placed composition of sculpture . Walking through it one feels that Bevis somehow tamed the jungle for his purposes , but only momentarily — stray from the path and you are back in the forest .
Visiting both gardens in one day , I was struck by the variety of emotions they elicited . Bevis ’ garden , which I saw first , was the wilder of the two but somehow more comforting and intimate . A douse monsoon rain had just end , leave a steamy and muggy atmosphere with drops of water still trembling on the palm fronds and rivulet of rain race across the way of life like minuscule snakes . No other tourists ventured out in such torridly humid weather condition , and no guide appeared to play along me . Yet I did not sense solitary . The path take me from vista to vista , each more breathless than the last . I feel I was being led by an inconspicuous docent who tell me where to stop and look or where to sit and rest . It was witching . At every turn I was cognisant of the gargantuan ribbon and tropic plants predominate overhead , quick to pounce and render to the jungle the land Bevis had so slyly seize .
Geoffrey ’s garden had the diametric effect . A guide walk me through the long landscape vistas of rice paddy fields with the lake as a background , through the carefully arranged clumps of trees , up Cinnamon Hill past the Frisians grazing in the hayfield . At the top of the Alfred Hawthorne , I enjoyed the long view back toward the main house . Everything matte up open to the sky . This garden felt almost familiar to this Englishwoman , particularly the presence of the happily grazing cows . Only occasionally did glimpses of tropical plant in the interstices of the garden remind me of where I was .
As I stroll back through Geoffrey ’s elegant , hold in landscape , images of the rather more outrageous elements of Bevis ’ garden flashed through my mind and I began to laugh . Later , I asked David Robson , generator ofBawa : The Sri Lanka Gardens , how he felt about the two gardens . “ Brief is introverted , ” he write to me , “ a series of outdoor rooms with almost no views toward the exterior . It is the more decorative , more eclectic of the two . Geoffrey Bawa may have place out to create a Sri Lankan adaptation of a European garden , but in the end he created something that owe more to Sri Lankan garden - making and landscape custom . ”
So Bevis made his garden and Geoffrey made his , and after examine the results , even if you recognise nothing about the men who made them , you could do some pretty precise speculating about their personalities . Whatever their differences , Bevis and Geoffrey dug out two incontestable chef-d’oeuvre from the rich Sri Lankan stain , producing two separately inspired garden that belong together as a kinfolk platter for generation to amount .
OTHER PLACES TO SEE
TheRoyal Botanic Gardensin Peradeniya , Sri Lanka , northeast of Colombo , wrap up 147 acres along the Mahaweli River and has allées of more than 200 metal money of palm , an orchid house , a jumbo Java fig tree , and a Victorian - style one-year garden . Geoffrey Bawa - designed hotelscan be found throughout Sri Lanka . For a whole dissimilar experience , visit the town of Nuwara Eliya in the mountainous cardinal region of the island where most colonial tea orchard were established . The town is full of English - style cottages and is a gravid base from which to search the woodlet ( some volunteer tastings ) and see the gorgeous spectacle of tea pubic hair planted in neat rows along the hillsides .
