Meeting at Mille Fleur (Aug24)
The Garden Club had its August 2024 meeting on Saturday, 17th, at the Great House, Mille Fleurs, on the western side of the Savannah. This Great House is full of romantic history and its name conjures up, more than anything else, a beautiful and romantic garden with, of course lots of flowering plants and trees.
The Garden Club of Trinidad donated its expertise and over $40,000.00 to the project of installing such a garden at the venue and the idea of the meeting there was to see how the garden developed over the 15 months since the project’s commencement.
Unfortunately, the Club was not greeted with a beautiful garden, but an unkept expanse of space with little that would conjure up love and romance in the observer’s mind.
The design for the front space was ten semi-circular beds against the roadside fence, only interrupted by the entrance gate. There would be ten yellow flowering small trees (Tacoma Stans). These were to be trimmed to form standards. Surrounding these, the plan was to have light and dark blue-flowering plumbago. These in turn would be edged with a short hedge of golden Duranta, marking the semi-circles. The south wall was to have three diamond shaped trellises with vining fuchsia bougainvillea and a short hedge of variegated white-flowering ixora at their bases. Surrounding the verandah, over thirty pinwheel jasmines were planted with a sea of white flowers expected in time and with appropriate care. The “piece de resistance”, the roundabout, with the wonderful fountain and its centerpiece of two hugging children sheltering under a perpetually dripping umbrella, was planted with only light and dark blue plumbago. The white and blue flowers being somewhat formal in deference to the white and blue Great House. The remainder of the garden was to be less formal.
Two arbors, two pedestals and two statues were also donated. An original garden bench was refurbished, and a large bird bath was installed in the back of the property. Large expanses of open space were left as tented functions frequently occur at Mille Fleur.
Enough said about what was supposed to be.
Allison De Gannes gave us a thorough and interesting bio of the beautiful Excocaria plant. Thank you, Allison. We all enjoyed that and will be very careful not to get any sap into our eyes when trimming this beauty.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the celebration of Simone Taylor’s birthday. Congratulations to Simone. We all wish you many more healthy and happy birthdays. Many thanks too, for being such a valued and active member of our club.
Mr. Graeme Suite, the business development and marketing coordinator for the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago, was kind enough to take the group on a tour of the Great House and give us a brief history of the house and its previous owners. This was riveting. We thank you, Mr. Suite.
The sharing of some delectable finger foods and a celebratory glass of bubbles ended the meeting. See you all next month at Chan Johnson’s home on the 28th September.
The pictures here show Mille Fleurs at different times since the project was completed.
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