Infinite horizons
Mary Keen looks back half a century at the gentle evolution of a secret Mediterranean paradise that’s involved three generations of Rothschilds
Three generations of Rothschilds have created a Grecian paradise at Kanonas, Corfu, says Mary Keen
On Corfu, in the north of the island, two peninsulas enclose a tiny bay that looks across to Albania. Here, 50 years ago, the present Lord Rothschild and his mother, Barbara, who was married to the Greek painter nikos Hadjikyriakos-ghikas—known as Ghika—discovered an unspoilt paradise. Gnarled olive trees grew on stonebound terraces arranged below a ruined olive press, there were veils of pink cyclamen under the trees and the sound of the sea swept through the silvery leaves.
This was Durrell’s Corfu, with a dirt road leading down to Kanonas and no other houses for miles. In the early years, the farmhouse was restored and a few more buildings were added to make a courtyard. With the help of the Spanish architect Jaime Parlade, the couple was very much engaged in bringing the place back to life and, because they were living in Athens, they often came over to Corfu for weekends.
Ghika designed walls, arches and secret places and added pebble mosaics to the courtyards, sitting patiently in a chair and pointing with a stick to show where the stones should be placed. His wife loved the wildflowers and introduced an almond tree and some apricot-pink Lantana camara near the pink-walled house.
Their life on the island was often shared by Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor. The great traveller wrote: ‘Against this backcloth for The Tempest, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there was feasting and talk and much laughter far into the night.’ In long illustrated letters, Leigh Fermor sent notes and plans for improvements, including the idea of a belvedere with a view to the little harbour of Koloura.
This idyllic life was beautifully recorded in a recent exhibition at the British Museum, celebrating ‘Charmed Lives in Greece’.
When I was first asked to help think about the landscape, I stayed with the couple for a week in november. We made trips to the interior of the island for inspiration, to the
Poet’s House to admire a tunnel of wisteria, to the only nursery garden, which mostly sold scarlet geraniums, or to a place where pots were made.
Wisteria had been one of the first outdoor improvements around the house. Planted under an iron pergola, it provided shade for meals to be eaten as we gazed at the forbidden coast of Albania.
Falling under the spell of the island, I shared the feeling that mainly local and native plants, rather than exotic garden features, were what was needed. Masses of columnar cypresses were added everywhere and we did plant some Aleppo pines among the olives, which had been ordered from the mainland as umbrella pines, because Barbara loved them. And, on the boundary of the beach below, as Ghika was a lover of the Orient, bamboos went in.
Falling under the spell of the island, I shared the feeling that local and native plants were needed
In one courtyard near Ghika’s fountain, an oriental plane tree was planted. For another courtyard, orange trees in pots and blue plumbago on the walls were chosen. Later, there would be more terracotta pots, with white gardenias and scented-leafed pelargoniums around the house.
In the years that followed, buildings were added and, when the beach and the marble rocks began to attract boatloads in August, Lord Rothschild commissioned a huge naturalistic pool from Javier Barba for family and friends to enjoy. This was carved out of an old quarry on the second peninsula, Strongilo. The excavations left scarred hillsides, above and below the pool.
On a south-facing slope, only the toughest native plants would survive. Pistacia lentiscus, the mastic tree, and Quercus coccifera, the Kermes oak, struggled for a couple of years, but survived to clothe the vertical ground with evergreenery, which soon looked as if it had been there for ever. This success was due to constant care from Andy Belton, who runs the estate.
It was always difficult to find local plants and those that were grown from seed soon caught up with imported ones bought in Italy or from mainland Greece. They also needed less water to establish themselves. Kew-trained Beth Rothschild arranged huge olives on the slope below the pool, her sister Emmy created a massive rock portico at the entrance to the new area and their mother decreed an olive on the terrace.
Rosemary was planted on either side of the path and clipped into billows and waves below the infinity pool filled with seawater. Myrtles and cypress made mounds in beds and, soon, cypresses were seeding themselves on rocky ledges.
The Rothschild property has always been a family affair. Most involved of all in the continuing beautification, Jacob Rothschild spent—and still spends—days thinking of how to make the place even more bewitching. Statues and columns are moved, cypresses added to block views of houses on the horizon, rockscapes revealed and towers designed by Tim Hatton conjured above the pool.
Behind the kitchen garden, when a smaller pink tower appeared, I planted an orchard of orange trees and another of apricots to anchor the new building to the domestic garden. We made a north walk at the back of the peninsula for spring flowers and, this year, Ghika’s sculptures of Nausicaa and Odysseus will finally be installed on Strongilo.
It’s been a long, ongoing process, always with the thrill of finding the family so intensely involved and with such an understanding of what makes the place so special.
Sometimes, visitors come, disappointed perhaps not to admire vivid hibiscus and bougainvillea, but the real glory of the place is the tangle of wildflowers in spring. Pink dandelions, purple vetch and blue lupins thread their way through thin grass scattered with mauve and scarlet anemones. Orchids are shyer, but there are plenty if you look.
Under the olives, the blue perennial honesty, Lunaria Corfu Blue, glows in the shadows. This garden-worthy plant is now often grown in England after I brought seed back. Bushes of cistus and Jerusalem sage sprawl on the rocks, the smell of resin from cypress and mastic bushes hangs in the air. The timeless flowers, the light that has beguiled so many painters, the glimpses of sea through olives and cypresses and the ancient olive boles all proclaim a secret paradise beyond the art of any gardener.
The real glory of the place is the tangle of wildflowers in spring