Latest / What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast / Rambling in the Outer Gardens | A Walk at Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel
Transcript
- Rambling in the Outer Gardens | A Walk at Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel What might you discover? There is much to find within the sprawling plantation gardens that disappear off into the jungle around Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. This is the longer of the two walks, which we call THE ESTATE WALK, and it starts at THE PODI PATH just outside the front porch that leads into the hotel. A traditional kitchen constructed of mud and bamboo once stood on this path, managed by Podemenike, whose life roughly and remarkably followed that of independent Sri Lanka. Around 1950, she began work on the estate as a lady’s maid. It was just a few years after independence, and she stayed on to help protect the estate once the family fled after the 1987 JVP Uprising. This violent Marxist-Leninist insurrection almost toppled the then government of President Premadasa. For over two years, a state of near anarchy dominated life, with militant riots, mass executions, and assassinations affecting most areas of the island. Pro and anti-government militias added to the battle, the casualties of which, Human Rights Watch eventually estimated at 35,000 – a figure no sides yet agree on. It wasn’t the first such uprising. In 1971, a similar insurrection occurred, this time against the Bandaranaike government, though its fatalities were considered lower. But the 1987 rebellion was the first truly island-wide event to profoundly affect the estate, leading to its abandonment by all except Podemenike and two elderly croppers, who were understandably fond of arrack. It was a terrible time for the country, and although Podemenike’s kitchen has long since gone, as you walk down this little path, you may, at least in your imagination, still catch the smell of real village cooking - warm spices and buttery rice. THE PODI PATH cuts through a pepper plantation, arriving soon at a flight of steps on the left just before THE SPICE KITCHEN. Herein lies the entrance to THE KITCHEN GARDEN, with two special trees coming into touch on the right. The first of these is a Cannonball Tree or Sal Tree. This is a mighty and magnificent wonder, with pink, white architectural flowers like half-open lids that give off one of the most perfumed and refined scents you are ever likely to encounter on this good earth. It grows to over one hundred feet, and the flowers eventually turn into seeds the size of cannonballs that hang off the main stems of the tree like a wayward artillery store. The tree comes from South America and is the source of adamantly held confusions. Buddhists believe that Lord Buddha was born in a garden of sal trees in Lumbini in distant Nepal. But the Cannonball or Sal tree, which grows in Sri Lanka, only arrived in South Asia in the 1880s. The first one to have a detailed record is the one in the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, planted on the 14th of April 1901 by George V and his wife, Queen Mary. Given the extreme botanical spectacle that this tree is, it is no surprise that it has come to be conflated with the sal Lord Buddha would have known – Shorea robusta, a smaller tree with little flowers and no fragrance. I hesitate to boast and brag, but the inevitable conclusion from comparing our Cannonball Tree with King George’s is that ours, being much larger, must predate 1901. Beside it is what looks like a Breadfruit tree. Or possibly a jacktree? Actually, it is both – a rare hybridising that occurred entirely naturally between these related species. The relationship coach, Laura Doyle, famed, at least in California, for her trademarked “Six Intimacy Skills,” remarked that “Only God is perfect. For the rest of us, there are apologies.” And so it is for our Kitchen Garden. Invaded nightly by hungry porcupines; several times by a small herd of 20 wild boar, and often at the mercy of deer, squirrels, and monkeys, it is a wonder it ever produces any herbs or vegetables. Even so, we limp on, brave as Obi-Wan Kenobi, planting organic wonders that will flourish all the better once we finally get around to fencing in the entire acre. The happier plants grow in a large greenhouse, mostly soft vegetables and herbs. The area is surrounded by shade nurseries, home to hundreds of hand-reared trees destined for timber plantations or our rare-trees arboretum. Returning to the steps up which you first came to enter the kitchen garden, you then pass, on your left, THE SPICE KITCHEN. This modest building was built in the traditional way as a Pandemic project in 2021 by our whole team, using bamboo, mud, and leftover materials. It is the place for staff teas and lunches, as well as a creche. Part of the building is used to process latex, the raw white juice extracted from the estate rubber trees, which is then half-dried and rolled on machinery made in Wolverhampton in the 1940s. At the building’s end is another flight of steps, this one leading up into THE HOCKIN SPICE GARDEN. The path through the spice garden is circular, eventually returning you to this point. And now you are in the Estate’s private spice garden, planted with cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, cloves, turmeric, and ginger and named for two sassy polyamorous Methodist family cousins who lived, ménage à trois, with a German POW on their remote Cornish farm for 50 years. Their three graves, side by side, overlook the sea near Morwenstow. The only graves here, however, are those of the three estate elephants, their limitless night songs still heard in the hearts of those best able to join in the occasional elephant Séance. The vanilla vines we grow in THE HOCKIN’S SPICE GARADEN are descendants of the 19th-century plants the British brought to the island, hoping to eclipse the commercial success the plant enjoyed in Madagascar. But it was not to be. Fastidious, fussy, and economical, it never amounted to much even though vanilla experts commend the unusual taste that Sri Lankan vanilla has evolved to produce - “a more complex flavour profile with delicate sweetness, subtle floral notes, and hints of cherry and caramel,” or so they say. Hand pollinated with the sort of brushes favoured by watercolourists of the more exquisite schools, it is nevertheless a bit of a hidden gem – and one that offers plenty of opportunities to practice patience. The cloves, cinnamon, and pepper planted alongside it are far more robust and withstand any amount of animal attack. But the turmeric and ginger tubers have to be husbanded carefully, for they offer wild boar treats of almost libidinous pleasure and excess. Getting back to the main path from its entrance point, THE PODI PATH then leads through a large plantation of pepper vines, growing gleefully up glericidia poles. Gliricidia is the perfect plant for this, being fast-growing and erect, and pumping the surrounding soil with lots of nitrogen. It is also much used as a living fence. The path moves on through jackfruit and clove trees and past THE ELEPHANT’S GRAVEYARD. Marked by Ceylon Oak or Koan Tree, the estate’s three elephants lie beneath it. The last elephant died in 1977, a few years after standing very firmly on her mahout. The plant itself is still long-lived, and this one is about 130 years old. All around it are more Jackfruit trees, some wild with smaller leaves and others more domesticated with larger crinkled leaves and more abundant fruit. The tree grows to around 70 feet tall and produces about 200 jackfruits a year from stems that bud directly from trunks and thick branches. It is one of those wonder superfoods that the West has recently discovered, but here it has long been popular in cooking –the seeds fried for chips, the flesh curried like pork, and the riper fruit made into puddings. From this point, the path is lined with new cocoa trees. For well over 100 years, cocoa was a core estate crop, and its oldest trees still grow here in the deeper jungle. Just 30 miles away is the island’s very first cocoa plantation, planted in 1819, 4 years after the British occupied Ceylon. This path of new trees, ALICE’S ALLEZ CHOCOLAT, is named for Alice, our Swiss family matriarch and first hotelier, from Appenzell, famed for its extraordinary cheese - and its liquor chocolates. The path continues below The Pineapple House and amphitheatre towards INKEN’S ACREAGE. Here, stretching out from a single Ginger Thomas tree, are acres of cocoa, teak, mara, and other classic highland trees kept uncultivated for wildlife. The Ginger Thomas tree comes from the Andes and is as highly ornamental as the person it is planted for, artist and family member, Inken Engstrom. Inken’s paintings hang in the hotel and in private collections in London, the Vatican, and Sweden. The tree itself provides immense protection against the excesses of nature, producing a leaf paste whose bio-chemicals bind to cobra venom enzymes, inhibiting the poison. At this point, the path divides: the more walkable stretch goes uphill into CINNAMON KATIA, a hill of newly planted cinnamon named for Katarina, a family member. Ceylon Cinnamon is known as true cinnamon for its unique, sweet, aromatic, and delicate flavour. It dates back at least to King Solomon, who imported it from Sri Lanka and refers to it in the Bible: “Your branches are an orchard of pomegranates with the choicest of fruits, with henna and nard, with nard and saffron, with calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of frankincense tree, with myrrh and aloes, with all the finest spices.” Two rare Trincomalee Wood Trees, beloved of shipbuilders, grow on its edges, protected by Presidential orders. At the top of the hill is THE AMBALAMA RISE, a hilltop named for Ambalamas, the resting places for pilgrims and travellers since ancient times. The nearest real Ambalama is 16 miles away, a remarkable 200-year-old structure built near the famous Kadugannawa Pass, a rock pierced to make the Kandy-Colombo road in 1820. This one is shaded by Cook Island Pines, originally from New Caledonia, and is renowned for its tilt, which depends on the hemisphere: growing upright at the Equator but leaning southward in the northern hemisphere and northward in the southern hemisphere. Also present are Jackfruit Trees and a Breadfruit Tree, remarkable for its carbohydrate-rich fruits. Breadfruit was introduced to Sri Lanka by the British in the late 18th century, after Captain William Bligh, famous for the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, collected saplings from Tahiti, a move that had disastrous consequences. From here, the path cuts across SINGING CIVET HILL, named for its occasional civets, and planted with cinnamon, Cook Island Pines, Sapu Trees, Poinsettias, red Flame Trees, originally from Madagascar; yellow Flame Trees and Australian Jacaranda. Somewhat unexpectedly, civet farts are widely known on the island to be so pleasant as to smell of the flower of the joy perfume tree – the Magnolia Champaca, a scent immortalised in Jean Patou’s famous perfume, 'Joy', a fragrance that outsold all others, excepting Chanel No. 5. If by now the walk is proving too arduous, you can cut back to the hotel through steps and a side gate – or walk on overlooking GABI’S CLOVE GROVE. Named for Gabi, a family member, the 600 young cloves planted here grow in the protective shade of ancient rubber trees, still occasionally milked for their sap. They are descendants of the first rubber trees sent to Sri Lanka in 1876 by the British Colonial Office, from Kew. Thousands of ferns from up to 20 species grow underfoot, including Silverback, Forked, Eagle, Sword, Whisk, Oakleaf, Limp leaf Ferns and Spleenworts. Beyond this are the estate’s WATER TANKS. The estate water comes from a deep well bored 300 feet through filtering rocks. Hydrologists and geologists picked the drill spot, but it took a traditional water diviner to nudge it onto its real mark. The water is then pumped up to these tanks, plentiful in the wet season but rather miserly in the dry season. Thankfully, our water supply is now supplemented by a recently acquired link to that rarest of all jungle species: mainline water from the new Galagedera-Mawathagama Water Supply Project. Water management, irrigation, storage, collection, and distribution were what made Sri Lanka’s great Anuradhapuran Kingdom possible in the first place, from the 5th century BCE onwards. Even today, it is a critical resource, powering over 50% of the electricity grid. Past the WATER TANKS is BEATA’S LOOKOUT. This viewpoint captures the spot where the immense dry plains of northern Sri Lanka begin their rise into the Central Highlands. Here, at 1,000 feet, the Galagedera Gap stretches out below, where, in 1765, the Dutch Army was defeated by soldiers of the Kandyan king. Stones rolled down onto the army from the adjacent hill. The Dutch sued for peace, returned to Colombo, and accepted defeat. The Dutch Coat of Arms that hangs on the hotel’s front porch was made a little before this date. The path then winds down through FRANGAPANI VALLEY, notable for its absence of frangipani trees, but soon to be the site of a newly planted arboretum of rare trees and out onto the main estate road, where it touches the main entrance gates. Here, the path is metaled - though when we first arrived, it had reduced to a single walkable track. Repaired and enlarged, it became THE RED ROAD. Only you can walk your journey, but many are on the road. So say native American Indians of THE RED ROAD, a metaphor for the sense of obligation and personal commitment to purposefully live your life. This RED ROAD, the main access to the estate, is carpeted from April to May by flowers of Flamboyant or Flame Trees planted across the estate. Grown from seeds from Madras, Sri Lanka, Australia, the Malay archipelago, the Caribbean, Africa, Egypt and the Gulf, the flowers vary from pale scarlet and almost orange to deep russets and vermilion. Batiks commissioned from Sri Lanka’s celebrated artist, Ena de Silva, on the flame tree theme hang all around the hotel. Hundreds of varied crotons, a plant noted for its kaleidoscopic leaf colours and patterns, bank the road. On one side, a pepper grove underplanted with sapu, teak, mahogany, African Tulip trees and mango stretches down into a small valley. On the other side rises a hill of rubber and cloves. And just before the walk ends, back at the central hotel entrance porch is JAMES’S CORKSCREW ORCHARD. This area is home to the estate’s goats, Imelda, and Ponzi, who mated "inter familia" to produce scores of Ptolemaic offspring, now farmed out to goat-loving vegetarian households nearby. Intended for a life of productive utility, the goats succumbed instead to a life of ornamentation and ease. Their paddock is planted with mango, rambutan, star fruit, coconut, tamarind, and guava. A pond and two old terrapin wells collect water naturally from the surrounding area. The orchard is named after James, a fond follower of the long and winding road. If the Estate walk proves too easy a promenade, then THE JUNGLE & VILLAGE WALK beckons. This walk leads out from the main estate through feral, undomesticated rubber and cocoa, into cinnamon, jungle, and eventually through a string of hamlets that abut the estate, where many of our staff have their homes. A small river runs alongside it, with acres of paddy, and the little road winds its way to the main estate gates. That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbrick at The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy, at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.