Juliet’s ode to a timeless garden
The author and the book. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Twenty years ago, Juliet Coombe was given the idea to write a book on Brief, Bevis Bawa’s timeless garden, by her friend Shalini Gamage. The garden, ‘wilder’ than Lunuganga, the estate of Bevis’s brother Geoffrey and more whimsical, needed its own bard and its own ode.
However, Juliet needed Covid to settle down to weave her lyrical panegyric of a book, now out as a coffee-table tome crammed with atmospheric photos and illustrations. Last Sunday launched at Brief itself, the volume, laughs Juliet, seemed to have needed a team of the size required of a ‘Bollywood production!’
Juliet who is based in Cornwall, Devon and Sri Lanka is best known in our shores as an author, travel writer with a taste for the exotic (occasionally seen in a glittering saree) also a photojournalist and restaurateur.
The book was unveiled in the lawn of the house not far from where Bevis would have lounged (as a Donald Friend painting in the house said) savouring the best of his Eden.
Juliet rather exuberantly did tours of the garden (whose every nook and cranny she knows) as guests straggled behind admiring everything from the mossy statues of not-so-modest boys peeing, a stone frog to the blossoming Devil’s flowers, walking irises, pink heliconias, tinted periwinkles, and all the little nooks with benches tucked beneath blooming vines. Also such wonders as a simple whitewashed statue of a resurrected Jesus against tropical wilderness, a Spanish gazebo, a Japanese garden pool with its otter statue and a Chinese moon gate…
The cover illustration of Juliet’s book featuring the satyrs that guard the entrance to the secret garden, was by the poet John Vincent. Juliet and the current custodians of Brief, Dooland and Dan de Silva and family, also cut a ‘Brief cake’, created especially for the occasion by the pastry team of the Calamansi Cove Villa.
Brief Garden Sri Lanka: Unlocking the Heart and Soul of Tropical Landscape Design, priced at Rs. 12,500 will be available at Brief throughout August for a special price of
Rs. 10,000, and can also be ordered by emailing julietcoombe@yahoo.com.au.
Guests at the garden party
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