Nuwara Eliya blooms in all corners (Travel)

(March 02, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka Guardian) Nuwara Eliya is known for its salubrious climes and for its exotic flower gardens. Flowers and Nuwara Eliya go together, in fact. And never so much as in April, the month of flowers, the time when Nuwara Eliya goes overboard with flowers.

There is a particular class of people who firmly believe that if you are not in Nuwara Eliya in April, you might as well crawl into a hole and die. It is the done thing. The fashionable thing. Like going to the Royal-Thomian, for some. You have to be there and you have to be seen. That is, if you want to be counted. But doing-the-done-thing aside, why do people go to Nuwara Eliya?

To play golf, maybe? To watch the horse races and bet on an animal? To party with the "in" people? To play or watch tennis? I don’t know. What I do know is that whatever brings people to Nuwara Eliya in April, they are mesmerized by the colour. Yes, flowers. Whether it is the Hakgala Gardens, the Nuwara Eliya Park, the finely laid out gardens of the Grand Hotel and the Hill Club, you will not miss the flowers. You will appreciate them beyond the appreciation demanded by social convention, and you will enjoy them even if you didn’t plan on doing so.

Still, it is not true that flowers grow or are grown only in these lush gardens meticulously maintained by experienced gardeners retained by the wealthy. Each and every household seems to have a thing for flowers. The size of the garden, the size of the purse`85these don’t seem to matter. And this is most evident in the small cottages and the small inns, chalets and guest houses which cater to the low-income local tourist. Such a place is "Sirimal Bungalow" down Lebanon Road.

Sirimal Bungalow, or rather its garden and its gardener, are on nobody’s must-visit lists. It must have something to do with marketing, or lack of it. Jesudasan, the gardener, has not exactly been ignored by those sitting in judgment regarding excellence in horticulture. He has won his fair share of awards in the garden competition over the past several decades. Wandering through the garden, even the casual stroller would not be surprised. The man obviously has a way with plants. If it was just that and nothing else, he would only be able to supply some nice flowers for vases and bouquets. For a garden is not about flowers alone. It is about colour combination. It is about layout and landscape. Dahlias, Chrysanthemums, Marigolds, Daisies and other flowers are beautiful by themselves, but they are still greater than their aggregate provided that the aggregation is well planned.

Jesudasan cannot emphasize enough the import of layout. He says that exposure to sunshine is extremely important. You have to have a good sense of sunshine and in what quantities in order to persuade the plants to yield the maximum in terms of colour, shape and general elegance. Placement is another factor, apparently. You have to make sure that the colours blend with the taller plants that are grown behind them. The manipulation of the colour green, as in lawn and fern, and their varying degrees must also be kept in mind for it is not necessarily the individual flower or bush that counts but the totality.

He knows about all these things, about organic fertilizers and other horticultural inputs, obviously. He knows about planning. He must, for agriculture is about seasons and seasonality. This is after all his vocation. It is more than that, clearly. Expertise always yields good products. Love, makes them superior products. One may or may not know about flowers. One does however recognize the beautiful. Jesudasan’s work pleases the eye. That alone is reward enough, I suppose.