Asian landscape designer plants seeds of diversity
MANOJ MALDE TO DEBUT ON BBC GARDENING SERIES
MANOJ MALDE, who was born in Mombasa, Kenya, into a Gujarati Oshwal community and came to London as a four-year-old in 1973, is a landscape designer who is about to bring a touch of much needed diversity into the world of gardening.
He will appear in a six-part BBC2 series, Your Garden Made Perfect, in which five designers will offer rival plans to clients.
Designers and clients will be able to view the digitally created gardens through goggles. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful way,” said Malde. “There’s no other gardening programme on TV that does that. This is a really new technique, whereby it’s a very immersive experience, not just for the designers – but more importantly – for the clients. Some of them were in tears, tears of joy, because they have been living with their gardens for such a long time and really didn’t know what to do with them.”
Your Garden Made Perfect is presented by Angela Scanlon, and features Malde, along with award winning fellow designers, Helen ElksSmith, Joel Bird, Tom Massey and Pip Probert. At the end of the series, one of the designers will be declared the winner and get to create the chosen garden in real life.
Malde made a name for himself after his colourful show garden at the 2017 Chelsea Flower Show attracted widespread attention. “I’m probably the first Indian, who has actually done a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show,” he told Eastern Eye.
His design, “Beneath a Mexican Sky”, with walls painted in vivid desert colours, was “inspired by the work of the talented Mexican architect Luis Barragan”.
“My garden received so much editorial through newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally,” he said. “Plus, it made two front covers of magazines. And it’s been published in two books as well. So many photographers photographed it and people posted it on Instagram and Twitter. So many bloggers and podcasters talked about the garden. It’s pushed me out to the front.”
Although Malde began in fashion, the memories of being surrounded by the fauna and flora of Kenya still permeate his garden designs. His father, too, was born in Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. His Nairobiborn mother, who is now 87, lives with Malde at his home in Brookmans Park in Hertfordshire. Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers made the journey to Kenya from India. Malde said, “My influences in gardening come from right way back when we were living in Mombasa.”
As a child, he remembers his father growing roses and jasmine in giant pots on the balcony.
Home in England was a house in north Wembley. “My older brother got me involved in digging the garden and growing vegetables. And I think it’s from that point that I have been interested in plants and flora and fauna. It’s that whole thing of putting a seed in the ground and nurturing it and watching it grow.”
Until three years ago, he lived in Woodside Park, a “very Indian area” in North Finchley, where he was able to sell the property within two weeks “because it had a beautiful garden”.
He is working out what to do with his garden in Hertfordshire. Last Sunday (24), he looked out and saw the weeping willow covered in snow. The tree, which he reckons is 20 to 25 years old, will remain untouched. More often than not, when his clients ask him to chop down a mature tree, he tries to persuade them to change their minds. And with Indians, he laments so many concrete over their front gardens to park their cars. He feels this is both ugly and bad for drainage. In Hertfordshire, he has seen beautiful, six- to nine-bedroom houses, where the front now resembles “a Tesco car park”.
His mother wants him to plant roses so that she is reminded of Kenya. This year he had a plentiful supply of peas from the garden – “we used them in curries”.
Asked if he had any tips for British Asian gardeners, he suggested: “Tomatoes are really easy. Also, runner beans. Cucumber is really easy. It needs lots of water, but it’s very easy to grow. And peas as well. And Indians and Pakistanis use chillis all the time. They also look so beautiful. I grow mogri. Some Asian communities call it moongre. It is the legume of the radish plant. It is either green or a reddish purple in colour.”
For those without a garden, he recommends buying a clutch of indoor plants. “You can create a little garden indoors. Get a little corner of a room that you sit in, in your lounge maybe, and put some pots in a group and get some plants in them.”
Malde emphasised gardening is for everyone and that it has provided a lifeline for many during the pandemic. He talked to the resident priests when he was commissioned to redesign the garden at the BAPS Swaminarayan Temple in Neasden, north London.
With Asians there is often a spiritual element to their gardens. “I was able to talk to one of the swamis who spoke of how important the garden is because they sometimes go outside to do their prayers. There are nurturing aspects to gardening. When you’re gardening, it brings you back down to earth.”
He gave Eastern Eye a list of the plants he used at the Neasden temple to encourage both biodiversity and wildlife: Rudbeckia Henry Eilers, Achillea Terracotta, Aster Patricia Ballard, Geranium Patricia, Verbena rigida, Geum Flames of Passion, Geum Totally Tangerine, Veronicastrum
Adoration, Coreopsis and Salvia Mainacht.
He had also chosen one of his favourite trees with “starry white flowers” – the Amelanchier lamarckii – which he will also have at home.
Malde is now working with the Royal Horticultural Society, which has appointed Glen Willie as its first “diversity, inclusion and wellbeing manager”.
“I have been invited by the RHS to start training to become an RHS judge,” said Malde. “It’s wonderful the RHS has appointed a diversity manager. I’ve been a speaker on some diversity panels recently. It’s important to drive that forward, and not just from the industry’s point of view. We need to encourage the diverse communities in the UK to get involved with the horticultural industry.
“I want them to grasp gardening and horticulture are not just enjoyable, but also good for health. That has come out through this pandemic – it doesn’t matter if you are growing vegetables or pretty flower ing plants.”
Moonbeam,
Manoj Malde appears on Your Garden Made Perfect, which begins on BBC2 on Thursday, February 4, at
8pm