Summit Garden
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Sat 3 Oct 2015 22:47
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The Summit Tropical Garden, Efate Island,
Vanuatu
 The Story taken
from the gardens newsletter: Jim and Lesley Batty had been fortunate to
visit Bali, Java and Malaysia several times whilst living in Darwin, and
developed a love of the best tropical gardens. The spectacular views from The
Summit presented the opportunity to build a large-scale garden. In 2000, Mr Adam
Ehlmann, an American tropical landscape architect who was residing in Port Vila
at the time, developed a plan to upgrade the existing gardens which were
fortunate to have “good bones” of huge rainforest trees, tropical shrubs and
grassed areas. He produced a series of plans based on the “Balinese” style of
garden that was very popular in those days and spent fifteen months supervising
the construction of the Terrace Gardens and several other areas. Adam departed
Vanuatu in 2002 but left behind him a number of sketches for future development
in the garden. These plans, and much more, were implemented with Lesley taking
the reins and directing an all Ni-Vanuatu workforce of gardeners and craftsmen
to bring it to its present state.
What started off
as a hobby became a driving ambition to create something beautiful that would
showcase the beauty of Vanuatu and its people. It seemed a logical next step to
share the Summit property with interested visitors and the gardens were opened
to the public on the 1st of November 2011. The Summit gardens have been
developed to provide maximum pleasure to the visitor. The eleven named gardens
are spread over six hectares, are all distinctly different, unfolding as a
series of surprises as you follow the meandering pathways. With thousands of
different species originating from all over the world, The Summit gardens remain
colourful all year round.
We began with the view and followed the pathways. We saw dove-tail lilies
– originally from Southern Mexico to South America, butterfly bushes from
Africa, Kenya and Uganda, black bat flowers from Southeast Asia, Tahitian and
beehive ginger from Malaysia, turmeric from India, allamanda from tropical
America, desert roses from Africa, Mexican hats from Madagascar and the
tillandsia creation from the Netherlands to name a few.
We bimbled all
over the garden and marvelled at the amount of work that has clearly been put in
since Cyclone Pam devastated the area just six months ago. We would have been
more than happy to pay an admission fee but the owners feel that charging is not
appropriate as small areas of the garden are ‘under construction’, so in support
we had lunch in the restaurant that only opened yesterday - in what used to be
the owners private residence , now swopped with what was the restaurant.
                                Quite a road – Devil’s Point – on the way down, don’t fancy the escape
lane much........
ALL IN ALL A LOVELY
GARDEN
BEAUTIFULLY LAID OUT AND
TENDED |