Secret gardens

from Rural Jersey Winter 2020

A cake for the Gestapo

Series: Secret gardens

We feature Jersey gardens that are in private ownership and not always visible to the public. In this issue, Alasdair Crosby was shown around the garden of Glanville Home, St Mark’s Road, by the gardener, Hilario Goncalves

“When I first came

to Glanville I felt that there were many things that I would like to do differently from the previous gardener. Fortunately the Glanville Committee were very happy to listen to my ideas, and to let me make the changes

St Mark’s Road is perhaps not the most obvious location for a large country garden. The front facades of the buildings facing the road present a very urban setting. One of these buildings is Glanville, a residential home for elderly ladies. Like the other buildings, it presents a pleasant - if not especially remarkable - face to the world: at some time it would have been a desirable private house; the former relatively narrow front garden facing the road is now a tarmacked area for visiting cars and delivery vehicles.

But whereas other buildings with a similar past have lost their gardens to development, Glanville Home has retained its own, hidden away to the sides and rear of the building.

It is a reminder of the time when, for example, Joseph Clarke, patriarch of the family that owned ‘Le Masurier’ wine merchants and now the property company, grazed cattle in the water meadow at nearby Le Coie in what would later become the Janvrin Road, and not far away ‘Val Plaisant’ was not called that for nothing.

It was a warm evening in late August that I was shown around the gardens by Hilario Goncalves, the gardener. He has tended the garden at Glanville for the past six years, having worked as a gardener at various private properties since he came to Jersey in 2002.

He said: ‘When I first came to Glanville I felt that there were many things that I would like to do differently from the previous gardener. Fortunately the Glanville Committee were very happy to listen to my ideas, and to let me make the changes.’

The past six years have seen a total transformation: it is now immaculate and a pleasure to view- a testimony to Hilario’s hard work and loving care.

There is a flower garden, with a ‘red white and blue’ theme, a kitchen garden for producing vegetables for the home’s residents, and fruit trees.

A sprinkler to keep the lawn’s grass green and fresh was operating at the time of my visit, geraniums, lobelia and begonia flowered in their beds and roses were in bloom, flowering for a second time that season.

Among the fruit trees are apple trees (both eating and cooking varieties) and cherries. The extensive kitchen garden supplies a wide range of vegetables all the year round for the home’s residents as well as soft fruit, such as strawberries and raspberries.

Over the winter months Hilario plants his Jersey Royals, ready to enjoy in the spring. Future plans include the possibility of having a roadside stall at which some of the surplus produce can be available for the wider public.

‘It takes a long time to prepare the garden to the standard I want,’ said Hilario. It is easy to see that, but to have a garden in such immaculate order is surely worth the effort.