VILLA GARDENS TO THE WEST OF FUNCHAL
The miniature gardens described in the previous chapter, which, as a
rule, surround the more humble dwellings of the Portuguese, frequently
only cover the small piece of ground at the back of the town house,
which is either converted into the backyard and rubbish-heap, decorated
with old tins and broken china, or converted into a little paradise of
flowers, according to the temperament and taste of its owner. Apart
from these are the larger gardens surrounding the villas, or _quintas_,
on the outskirts of the town. Most of these gardens are owned by
English residents, and to them Madeira owes the introduction of many
floral treasures. The first impression of these gardens, taken from
a general point of view, is that they are lacking in form, the idea
conveyed being that the original owner of the garden made it without
any definite plan in view. For that reason they invariably lack any
sense of grandeur or repose. It is only fair to say, however, that
the landscape gardener has had many difficulties to contend with. The
natural slope of the ground is, as a rule, extremely steep, especially
in gardens situated on the east side of the town. But the ground by
no means necessarily falls away only in front of the house. It as
often as not falls to one side as well, which makes terracing a very
difficult and serious undertaking. To move earth by means of small
baskets carried on men’s backs is a sufficiently serious matter in the
East, where coolies are employed at a very low rate of wages, and are
accustomed to this method. But in Madeira, where wages are by no means
low, this procedure, which is absolutely necessary, has an important
financial aspect when laying out a garden. The result is to give the
gardens the effect of having been added to bit by bit, and many of
them are broken by slanting terraces without any particular meaning.
In common with all foreign gardens, they lack the beauty of English
turf, as the finer grasses will not withstand the heat and dryness of a
Madeira summer. Natal grass, which grows from very small tubers, is the
most common substitute for turf, as it is hardy and can be mown fairly
close. Some of the finer American grasses have been found successful,
especially for growing under large trees, which is most useful, as
nothing is so unsatisfactory as the effect of trees growing out of
would-be flower-beds. All the beauty of the trees is lost through the
outline of the stems being confused by the surrounding plants, which
in themselves are probably poor specimens, owing to the fact that they
are constantly being starved through the goodness of the soil being
absorbed by the roots of the trees.
Stone balustrades are unknown in Madeira, where cement or plaster
has to take the place of stone. Simple designs can be carried out by
this means, but, as a rule, a low wall, only about two or three feet
in height, from which rise at intervals square pillars, originally
intended to support the wooden cross-bars of the vine pergola, finishes
the terrace and gives it a very characteristic effect. These pillars
can be creeper-clad, and either stand alone or support a canopy of
wistaria, bignonia, or some other gorgeous creeper.
Any defect in the scheme of the gardens is amply atoned for by the
wealth of colour and abundance of flowers they contain, at almost all
seasons of the year.
Some of the older gardens were laid out more as pleasure-grounds, and
planted with specimen trees brought together from all parts of the New
and Old world, and in these especially the lack of good turf is keenly
felt. I am thinking of the gardens which surround the Hospicio, which
was built in 1856 by the late Empress of Brazil, in memory of her
daughter, the Princess Maria Amelia, who died in Madeira.
The garden is well cared for, and contains a good collection of trees
and flowering shrubs. Near the entrance are some very fine _Ficus
comosa_ and two splendid _Jacarandas_, which, when they are laden with
their blue blossoms, stand out splendidly against the dark evergreen
trees; also a very large Coral-tree, whose grey leafless branches are
adorned early in the year with scarlet blossoms. In the centre of the
garden are two unusually fine specimens of _Duranta_ trees, whose long
hanging racemes of orange berries cause them to be much admired all
through the winter and spring months, while in summer the branches
are laden with their blue blossoms. Dragon-trees, frangipani-trees,
judas-trees, camphor-trees, til and _Astrapea viscosa_, are all to
be found here, and a large specimen of the gorgeous flame-coloured
Flamboyant or Poinciana, may be easily recognized by its flat spreading
branches, which shed their fern-like foliage before the blossoms
appear. At all seasons of the year the garden affords a delightful
pleasaunce for the inmates of the Hospital, and can never be entirely
colourless, as the red dracenas and the bright crimson leaves of the
acalypha, which are blotches of a lighter or darker colour, afford
a welcome note of colour at all seasons of the year and a relief to
the eternal green of the evergreen trees. The walls of the garden are
clothed with bougainvilleas, wistarias, and other creepers, and the
beds contain a variety of plants, such as clerodendrons, hibiscus,
abutilons, begonias, azaleas, and roses. The grass edges to the beds
give the garden a character of its own, and might well be copied in
other Madeira gardens.
[Illustration: DATURA, QUINTA VIGIA]
On the opposite side of the same road at the top of the Augustias
Hill stands the Quinta Vigia; the name means a look-out place or
watch-post, and no doubt the villa was so called because the grounds
command a fine position, the terrace wall ending with a sheer descent
100 feet or more down to the sea. The garden has a fine view of the
harbour, the Brazen Head, the distant islands of the Desertas, and the
Loo Rock, which lies immediately below the cliff. The late Empress of
Austria spent the winter of 1860-61 at this quinta, and since
then the property has had various owners. Though the garden is now
neglected, as the villa has been uninhabited for some years, the trees
remain, and together with those belonging to the adjoining Quinta das
Augustias on the one side, and those of the Quinta Pavao on the other,
form one of the principal features of the town of Funchal. The day is
probably fast approaching when the whole of this property will fall
into the hands of an hotel company, but it is to be hoped that some
effort will be made to save the trees. From far and near the splendid
specimens of _Araucaria excelsa_ form a very important feature in
the landscape, as they have attained an immense size. I am told that
Mr. William Copeland first introduced these Norfolk Island pines to
Madeira, and planted those at Quinta Vigia. They seem to have taken
kindly to their adopted country, though not, of course, attaining
to the gigantic height of 150 feet, as they are said to do in their
native land. The garden also contains a good specimen of _Araucaria
braziliensis_. One of the largest cabbage palms in the island stands
near the entrance, and the garden is rich in rare trees. Grevilleas,
with deep orange bottle-brush-like flowers; schotia, with its deep
crimson-red blossoms; magnolias; the deciduous _Taxodium distichum_,
mango-trees, and hosts of others, adorn the grounds. Among the
shrubs are pittosperums, with their leathery grey-green leaves and
greenish-white sweet-scented blossoms; also francisceas and great
quantities of _Euphorbia fulgens_, whose long wreaths of orange-scarlet
flowers remain in beauty all through January and February. Here are to
be seen pittangas, or _Eugenia braziliensis_, the myrtles of Brazil,
with their small shiny foliage and little sweet-smelling white flowers,
resembling the common myrtle, only borne on slender stalks; the ribbed
orange-coloured fruit is not only very decorative to the shrub, but
is valued as a great delicacy among the Portuguese. _Murraya exotica_
has flowers closely resembling orange blossoms in form and fragrance,
and appears to flower in spring and autumn. The verandah of the house
is clothed in creepers, among which are _Allemanda schottii_, with
its pure yellow blossoms, the deep crimson-flowered _Combritum_;
_Thunbergia laurifolia_, with its lavender-coloured flowers; and
_Rhyncospermum jasminoides_, whose tiny white starry flowers fill the
whole air with their delicious fragrance late in April. Large
bushes of the sweet-scented diosma and a small heath are a feature of
the garden, while the great number of rose-trees are a legacy of one
of its English owners, and in spite of the fact that they are now no
longer carefully pruned, they flower in great profusion on immense
bushes in December, and again in April.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF SENECIO]
Near the entrance some large masses of purple and scarlet bougainvillea
are to be seen, and by the middle of March the great buds of the
immense and rampant-growing solandra are swelling, and in a few days
the greenish-white trumpet-shaped flowers will have opened. The beauty
of each individual blossom is short-lived: when newly opened it is
of a greenish-white, which gradually turns to a deep cream colour,
and then, alas! to a most unsightly brown. Unfortunately, the plant
shares with thunbergia its ungraceful habit of retaining its blossoms
in death, which mars the beauty of the freshly opened flowers. Large
clumps of the yellow-flowered _Senecio grandifolia_ are very effective
when the great loose heads of blossom are at their best in February.
The plant has fine foliage, and though many people despise it and
regard it as a weed, on the outskirts of the garden or hanging over
a wall it is certainly worthy of a place. Like its humble relation
the common groundsel, it has an objectionable habit of scattering its
fluffy seed to the four winds of heaven as soon as the plant is out
of flower. This, to be sure, could be avoided by cutting off the old
flower-heads as soon as they are over, but would be rather a Herculean
task in gardens where it has spread into great beds. The plant is
impatient of drought, and its foliage soon flags in the heat of the
sun unless its roots are well supplied with moisture, and it will be
discovered that its roots run far in the ground in search of it, which,
combined with its practice of seeding itself in undesirable situations,
makes it a dangerous plant to introduce unawares to a garden, as, once
established, it is there for good.
Farther to the west of the town are the gardens of Quinta Magnolia,
which cover an extensive area, largely increased by the present owner,
until they now extend down the slope of the hill to the bed of _Ribeiro
Secco_, or the Dry River. To those interested in the culture of palms
these grounds will be of great interest, as the collection is a good
one, and includes some very fine specimens, seen to great advantage,
standing on slopes of the nearest approach to turf which the island can
produce.
[Illustration: WEIGANDIA AND DAISIES]
Some of the cabbage and date palms have attained an immense size, and
are a great ornament to the landscape, and some fine groups of the
curious screw pine, _Pandanus odoratissima_; it has peculiar flat
leaves and an uncouth flower, which bears a strong resemblance to the
body of a dead rabbit hanging from the plant! The grounds command fine
views, and were laid out for the present owner by an English landscape
gardener. There is a curious cave or grotto formed out of the natural
rock, clothed with ferns and mosses, which no doubt remains cool and
damp through the summer, and forms a welcome retreat from the fierce
heat of the sun.
Close by are the grounds of Quinta Stanford, or Quinta Pitta, as it
was originally called by its first owner. The gardens have been very
much enlarged by their present owner; banana plantations have gradually
vanished, and the grounds no longer present the cramped appearance
from which they formerly suffered. New-comers to Madeira, as a rule,
express great surprise that the gardens are not larger and generally
only cover such a very small piece of ground. The value of the land
for agricultural purposes--formerly for growing vines, then, possibly,
for banana cultivation, and now for sugar-cane--is no doubt largely
responsible for this, and also the great difficulty of acquiring a
piece of ground of any considerable size in the neighbourhood of
Funchal. In many cases even one acre may be owned by several different
landlords, land being divided into incredibly small holdings.
[Illustration: CYPRESS AVENUE, QUINTA STANFORD]
In this respect the owners of Quinta Stanford are to be envied, as the
house stands well surrounded by its own ground, out of sight of the too
common unsightly _fazenda_ and its inevitable squalid cottages. From
the terrace in front of the house the view is unrivalled, comprising
a fine view of the sea and an unbroken view of the mountains behind
the town of Funchal. It is easily seen that the garden is tended
with unceasing care by its present owner, and near the entrance some
judicious massing of shrubs and flowering trees has in a very few years
well repaid the planter; some large clumps of weigandias, _Astrapea
pendiflora_, and bushes of common white marguerite daisies of mammoth
proportions give a broader effect than is usual in most Madeira
gardens. To my mind, the very greatest praise should also be given to
the owner for having planted an avenue of cypresses, almost the noblest
and grandest of all trees, especially when seen under a southern sun,
and their absence in the landscape of Madeira is keenly felt. The
Portuguese see no beauty in them, and only connect them with death, for
which reason they are scarcely ever seen except in cemeteries. From
the astonishing growth which the young trees at Quinta Stanford have
made in a few years, it is evident that the soil is very favourable
for their culture, and it seems almost incredible that more owners of
gardens, who must have seen what Italy owes to her cypresses, should
not have planted them in Madeira; but it is to be hoped that even now
others may follow the excellent example set before them at Quinta
Stanford.
The owner of the garden has much to tell of the successes and
failures he has made, not only with imported plants, in the hopes of
inducing them to find a new home in Madeira, but he journeyed far and
wide to make a collection of the native ferns, of which there are
a great quantity. Many of them, removed from the cool, damp air of
their mountain homes, pined and died a lingering death in the air of
Funchal, which was too hot and dry; and the atmosphere of a _stufa_, or
greenhouse, is unsuited to the hardier ferns.
Some interesting experiments have also been made with rock-plants,
in order to see whether it would be possible to induce any of our
favourite Alpine plants to adopt a home in warmer climes; but I fear,
though some may survive for a year or two, in the end they will grow
steadily smaller, until they dwindle away and cease to exist. So I am
afraid the making of a rock-garden in the sense which we in England
regard a rock-garden--_i.e._, an artificial arrangement of rocks,
clothed with carpets and cushions of flowering Alpine plants--will
never be possible in Madeira. Here the rock-garden must remain
as Nature intended it to be--rocks and cliffs, interspersed with
prickly-pear, agaves, cactus, some of the larger saxifrages, and such
native plants as _Echium fastuosum_.
The gardens owned by the English suffer, as a rule, somewhat severely
from the absence of their owners just at the season of the year when
they require the closest care and attention, and this may possibly
account for the failure to acclimatize many of these imported
treasures. If they could be tended with loving hands, screened from
the fiercest of the sun’s rays, given exactly the amount of water they
require, no doubt there would be many less failures; but the ignorant
Portuguese gardener probably either starves the plant by entirely
omitting to water it, especially if it is unlucky enough to be out of
reach of the hose, or else he drowns it with too much water, until the
ground surrounding it becomes a swamp: for the conditions suitable to a
rock-plant would be as unknown to him as the conditions required by a
bog-plant.
Some tree-ferns in a sheltered corner make a very good effect, and seem
likely, from the strong growth they have made in a few years, to become
very fine specimens.
On the terrace near the house are beds of begonias, roses, geraniums,
heliotropes, sweet olives, and the garden flowers common to most
Madeira gardens, while the walls are clad with a succession of
creepers; so all through the winter months the garden remains a feast
of colour.
Eighteen years ago the ground which is now the beautiful garden
of the Palace Hotel was nothing but rocky, waste ground, bare of
vegetation, except for the clumps of prickly-pear, agaves, and cacti
which take possession of all the rocky ground along the shore. For
situation the garden is unrivalled, and though the garden lacks the
care and attention which naturally are bestowed on a private garden,
the luxuriant growth, especially of the creepers, has converted the
formerly waste ground into a beautiful jungle of flowers. The garden
is devoid of any fine trees, except for the ficus trees, a few oaks,
and a stray cypress or two which surround the Dépendence, which was
formerly a private house; it stands at the very edge of the precipitous
cliff, where the unceasing roar of the surf rings in one’s ears as it
dashes almost against its very walls. In front of the main building are
some large cabbage palms, affording welcome shade and shelter, which
have made astonishingly rapid growth, as only ten years ago they were
merely items in flower-beds, and I little thought that on my second
visit to the island, some seven years later, they would have become an
important feature in the garden.
[Illustration: ALOES AND DAISY TREE]
Early in December, when the whole island is fresh and green after the
autumn rains, and presents more the aspect of spring than late autumn
or even winter, the view from the garden is surprisingly beautiful.
The cliffs have broad stretches of the brilliant red-flowered _Aloe
arborescens_, with its large rosettes of glaucous grey-green leaves,
which makes the plant always ornamental, even when it is not adorned
with its hundreds of scarlet flower spikes. Some people say it was
always indigenous to the island, and found its home in the Santa
Luzia ravine. Whether this is really the case I feel doubtful, as Mr.
Lowe, in his “Flora of Madeira,” quotes it as one of the plants which
has become naturalized, though probably originally introduced. Growing
on the cliffs the flowers show to great advantage, standing out in
sharp contrast to the deep blue sea below, but it is a great ornament
wherever it grows, whether in clusters overhanging a wall where its
rosettes of leaves overlap each other in thick tufts in endless
succession till there seems no reason why they should ever stop, or
clothing the rocky ground on the hillside among the pine-trees.
At the same season the _Franzeria artemesioides_, or daisy-trees,
as they are commonly called, are in full beauty. The best method of
treating these trees is to cut them back when they have done flowering,
as the large clusters of daisy-like flowers appear on the long shoots
of young wood. When their flowering season is over, they lose their
large grey-green leaves, so it is lucky that the tree can be so
treated, or the long bare branches would make them unsightly at other
seasons. The hedges and bushes of _Plumbago capensis_ attain to mammoth
proportions when they can escape the attention of the gardener’s
ruthless shears, and are laden with their lovely soft blue blossoms
in late November and December. Then comes a season of rest, though the
plant is seldom entirely devoid of colour, and in early spring fresh
shoots give promise of a wealth of blossom again in April and May.
Bougainvilleas have been planted with a lavish hand, but unluckily with
no regard for colour. I sometimes wondered if the Portuguese gardeners
are _all_ colour-blind, as it is by no means uncommon to see a bright
purple bougainvillea planted side by side with a scarlet one, and as
likely as not, interlaced with a flaming orange bignonia, while the
bright pink Charles Turner geranium grows happily below. In Madeira
gardens colour runs riot, and I own that the prolonged flowering
season of many of the creepers and shrubs makes the colour scheme more
difficult than it is in our English gardens.
The great clumps of _Crinum powellei_ are a remarkable feature of this
garden, when late in April the great bulbs send up their spikes of
either pure white flowers or white delicately flushed with pink. The
flowers come in six to ten in an umbel, on stems three to five feet in
height, and are very freely produced--large clumps sending up a dozen
or more flower-heads at the same time. The bulb has long narrow green
foliage, which is very ornamental. The flowers have a delicate but
somewhat sickly scent; the plant is a native of Natal, and, like others
of its compatriots, has taken kindly to the climate and soil of Madeira.
It would be impossible to enumerate all the host of other plants the
garden contains--creepers, shrubs, flowering trees, besides roses,
begonias, geraniums, heliotropes, in an almost endless list--while the
cliffs have remained a natural rock-garden. In the clefts of the rocks
giant agaves occasionally throw up their great flower-heads fifteen
feet or more in height, and then the plant, as if exhausted by the
supreme effort in the climax of its existence, dies; but it is quickly
replaced by hundreds of others, as the seed of the monster flower
has found fresh ground in every nook and cranny. Besides the agaves,
clumps of prickly-pear, or _Opuntia tuna_, with its curious succulent
growth clothed with poisonous thorns, some wild saxifrages and tufts of
_Echium fastuosum_, known as Pride of Madeira, have all found a home.
This garden is the last one of any interest on the west side of the
town, as beyond lie only a few modern villas in the worst possible
taste, with no grounds worthy of the name of a garden; but almost
opposite to the hotel in the grounds of Casa Branca for a few short
weeks in the year the avenue of _Poinsettia pulcherrima_ interspersed
with date palms and clumps of strelitzias is worth seeing. The
poinsettia blooms are almost the largest I have ever seen, measuring
quite eighteen inches in diameter from point to point of the scarlet
leaves. Like the daisy tree, the poinsettia flowers on the young wood,
and throws out fresh branches six to ten feet long, which can be cut
back in January, when the beauty of the blossoms is gone and the
foliage becomes an unsightly yellow and at length drops altogether.
When seen growing in all their luxuriant and garish splendour, it is
difficult to remember that it is the same plant that one has seen
in a weakly and attenuated form in our English stove-houses, with
one poor little flower-head at the end of a single stem imperfectly
clad with sickly foliage. Poinsettias seem to rejoice in rich soil,
and they appear to revel in the liberal feeding of the adjoining
banana plantations, which, no doubt, they deprive of a good deal of
nourishment; but they well repay their owner, as in the glow of the
western sun they provide a veritable feast of colour all through
December.
[Illustration: POINSETTIA ON THE MOUNT ROAD]