When I met M in person (and say in person cause we had spoken once more online via video chat) she came to the house with a big red vase full of peonies.

The people who know me a little, or a lot, understand quite well my love for plants, especially those that are not so easy to grow in Athen's hot and dry summers. 

Well, one of those plants are Peonies. 

In Greece there are some native species of this plant especially in the north of the country among the forests and surprisingly enough we have a species that grows in a few spots on the island of Lesvos but that is about it. 

Many years ago I planted one at the cabin in the woods I was going often in the north of the Peloponnese but the bugger flowered when I had already moved out of that house and you can imagine how upset I was when they called me to ask what is that beautiful plant that had finally flowered in the garden there... I was livid, not only cause I missed it but because it just waited for me to leave in order to flower! 

Anyway, M arrived with her goodies and of course I had to see her garden and the Peonies! So I asked her because as my friend Godfrey says, if you do not ask, you do not get. 

She looked at me a bit perplexed, I guess not many people love going out and about visiting gardens, but for some crazy ones like me we really love it. 

Anyway, to make a long story short a few days afterwards she called and invited us over for a private tour. 

Truth is I did not know exactly what to expect. But Marc said that I would love it there and he suggested that I bring my good camera with me.. 

He was partially right... I mean I did not just love it but I just adored it!! 

And the reason for that is M herself...

You see, usually what happens is, so many people when they build a house they care more for the inside than the outside. They spend most of their budget for the interior and do not invest the same, neither the money or time for the outside. So, in most cases, they hire a designer whose ideas you see in the garden and because of the budget most of them are not developed at their fullest. And also hardly ever do the owners of the place know what they want to begin with so they do not express their needs etc etc.. 

Well, this garden is not one of those. It belongs to the rare type that has been designed organically, with a lot of thought put into it by it's owners, with a ton of love and care, and after they build it, they let it grow, almost as if the garden is one more of their kids and then the garden evolves having it's own personality, echoing the voices of the owners but having a voice of it's own. And this particular garden was shouting its personality out in the world making M and D really proud and me feeling so lucky that I experienced it. And I am very anxious to meet their children one day as well as judging from the garden the "human" kids must be equally fantastic!

Some beautiful things about the garden were the mature giant trees in the entrance, connecting the garden with the nearby woods, beautiful combination of various shades of Green and not the usual "let's add flowers everywhere, cause we do not know any better". 

Beautiful sitting areas, a sauna and an open shower, parts with shade connected to parts where the light comes almost vertically, pergolas and winding paths leading to unique plants. 

Two of M's favourites plants were a Japanese maple and two yellow azaleas that she moved to her garden from her mother's garden when she passed away and connects her even more with her mother now. M got the love of gardening from her mother and how wonderful it is that this love will continue for many years to come and the plants will live on. 

Have not heard something like that happening in Greece, either because we do not have the space for big gardens with mature plants or we still do not have those kinds of sensitivities. I sure found it wonderful though.. 

 Funny thing is that when we finally reached the part of the garden where the Peonies are, I was not so impressed by them any more.

I am not saying that they are not beautiful as they sure are, with every colour shade imaginable between white and deep red, single of double petals, they look a bit like the big old scented roses.

To be honest though I had seen so many more interesting plants, from huge trees to the viburnums that were in bloom and a tiny springy cotoneaster with even tinier leaves and twisted branches so the peonies with their flamboyant presence were almost too much for the place.

Of course in this secret garden you can also find a vast collection of ferns, roses, a few veggies here and there, and many berries so I guess in some ways it looks like a "normal" garden but the sense that you get from it is a sense of deep privacy.

A reclusive type of privacy though, do not get me wrong. 

It is a garden not so much to be shared with all but it is for the few to discover. And this is the reason that you may never read this post as before making this public I will send it to M for her to see and only if she approves of what I say I will make it public and accessible for all to see. If not, I will send her some of the pictures I took of the garden and only a few will ever see them keeping this gem a secret. M's secret garden... 

When I was preparing the garden for the cabin I used to have, my good friend Andonis and I were talking about a little fence I wanted to make using a plant and I was thinking of having artichoke plants there. They have thorns, especially the wild varieties and I believed that they would be a perfect match. Also their flowers apart from the fact that we eat them, they look quite beautiful as well.
My good friend was joking and he was saying that I should also plant some lentil plants on that fence as well.. Anyway... 
In the garden here in the house I did plant a few along the fence at the back but because that part of the garden is very shady and artichoke plants need a lot of light they did not do very well there... Will plant some in the front garden that receives more light... 

If my cousin Vagelio reads this page she will be amazed. I am sure she remembers how I hated artichokes when I was a kid and my mother made me eat her bloody Artichokes ala Polita. For some reason I didn't like them at all. I think that they have a very distinct taste that was too powerful for my taste buds. But I guess it is an aquired taste and that as you grow older you get to like. Maybe it all started when I started having them raw, or maybe when my friend Hellen made a huge dinner with various dished made from artichokes.. Anyway! I really love it as a plant. 
I bought a lot of them last time I was at the farmers market and cooked them in 3 different ways. I will upload these recipes on the website in the next few days so you will see them for yourselves. 

As food they are full of antioxidants and they lower your cholesterol level and also because they help produce a lot of bile they help with your metabolism and certainly boost it so by eating artichokes you end up loosing weight.

So what else do you want? 

So prepare for nice recipes and you will certainly love them! 

With the winter we had this year, with the rain and the cold and with everything growing rapidly and one thing or another, I haven’t done that much in the garden..

I have a lot of pruning to do, a lot of weeding and I should have done that already, but when do you get the time?….

I hope things improve this weekend as I haven’t done a good job so far this year!

At least during the recent busy period there are some plants that have woken from their winter sleep and are showing the way towards spring.

Of the two Japanese Maple Trees one of them has already sprouted the first leaves and it looks wonderful.

It needs to be pruned though, as it is too densely packed in the centre and shouldn’t be left like that.

The second Japanese Maple with the red leaves is still asleep but walking past it yesterday I saw little buds starting to appear.. I think it will start to wake up within the week.

The roses I bought from Avrami last year need hard pruning and fertiliser. And a spray with bug spray to avoid the worst. They have some flowers already which are so pretty I will wait for a few days before I prune them.

The stars of the garden this year are the Narcissi which I bought from my friend Pavlos Giannaro in Sokratous Street in Athens. I will write a separate article about Narcissi on the site when they all come into flower, but for me they are the best spring flowers of all and I really love them! Until now only two varieties have blossomed but I am expecting the rest within the week to be in bloom.

I would like to say at this point the people I refer to- I am not advertising them or their products or shops… I don’t know who has the Avrami plant nursery and I don’t really care either!

I have known Pavlos for years and I trust him implicitly about plants but generally whenever I mention places, people or products here it’s not to publicise them its because I love them and use them myself.

I hope to update you on the garden soon.

We are very proud of the home in which most of the experiences you can have with us are organised.

It was a large store-room in my family home in New Philadelphia, a northern Athens suburb, which we converted into a working home with a large open plan kitchen, a 3 metre long, hand made oak table and a beautiful garden.

Have a look at the video below to understand the process and time it took to make our dream a reality…