The Gardens of Madeira

Attracting over a million visitors each year, the island gardens of Madeira are unique. For centuries Madeira was at the crossroads of the world - half-way between the tropics and the old continent. The islanders were poised to receive plants from far-flung empires and accommodate ideas from both north and south. In such a climate, growth is phenomenal and streets and squares are filled with magnificent trees (jacarandas, flame-trees and rosewoods) let alone the oozing dragon trees. Some thirty gardens in and around the capital, Funchal, and further afield as well as some of the unique native flora and landscape are expertly described. Luckhurst also explores the discovery and development of the island and its earliest gardens, and the role of Portuguese aristocrats and British wine merchants in creating the country estates known as quintas.

Emily Shore, a little known poet, came to the island in 1838, when she was but nineteen and died in the following year. She excitedly described her first glimpse of a Madeira garden from the windows of her lodging house:



…with delighted astonishment we looked down on a garden crowded with the richest green foliage….I do not think that any garden was ever so charming in my eyes…a carpet of vines covering the trellis-work shaded the walks. Orange trees, five and twenty feet in height, loaded with golden fruit, light bamboos, bananas with their broad-fringed leaves, thick-leafy coffee trees, forming an impenetrable and evergreen shade, camellias of enormous size, china roses still in bloom - all combined in a completely foreign picture from anything I ever saw.



Such descriptions were repeated a hundred times, almost word for word. Breakfast tables laden with exotic fruit, delicious coffee (Veitch noted that the backyards of Funchal produced over 2,000 pounds of roasted beans a year) and melodious canaries in the trees, were all an eager consolation to these melancholy souls. Freshly revitalised, some would take to their pony and visit the hills above Funchal and explore the majestic scenery of the Corral, a cauldron-like valley high in the mountains that was the obligatory destination for all romantic tourists.



It is from these descriptions that a generalised picture of the gardens and streets of Funchal may be obtained. The gardens were surrounded by high walls, painted yellow ochre with rust red bands along the base and as trim around doors and windows. The narrow streets between these walls were far from dull since the contents of the exuberant gardens escaped over the confining walls: hedges of fuchsia, heliotrope and roses mixed with geraniums, gardenias and jasmine tumbled out. Often vine-clad pergolas would bridge over the roads. The taller trees such as bitter oranges and loquats would bend into the street under the weight of their abundant fruit.



Leaving Funchal, travellers would pass through country roads barely paved with shards of black basalt. (Or worse, none at all; opinion as to the state of the roads is unanimous. It is said that there were no wheeled vehicles on Madeira for this reason.) The estates around the town were known as Quintas (pronounced as often spelt by early English writers: Kintas). These are country houses, originally farms, equivalent to modest Italian villas. Each property would have a small area around the house known as the jardim (garden) surrounded by far more extensive areas of vineyards and vegetable gardens known as the fazenda. By force of necessity this land would be terraced and great retaining walls are a feature of the Madeira landscape. The garden would contain pretty flower beds edged with box or myrtle and the walls surrounding the enclosures would be decorated with niches and benches, sometimes with painted tiles (azulejos) but these were an imported luxury, more often broken crockery and volcanic tuff was used to create grottos. The paving in these enclosed areas was characteristically laid out in patterns of tiny black pebbles carried up from riverbeds or the beach.



A unique and ubiquitous feature of these gardens was the Casinha de Prazer. The name means 'pleasure house' and is derived from the French maison de plaisance, a term used for garden buildings and banqueting houses since the seventeenth century. Characteristically these little summer houses were located at the corner of the property, perched atop high walls, and always overlooking the street and views beyond. Before the summer houses became fashionable Mirantes or Miradouros (viewing platforms often covered by vine pergolas) were used in the same way.



The British tourists describe how the commotion caused by the clatter of their ponies' hooves invariably led to dark-eyed beauties peering at them through the slats of these summer-house windows. Young women of Portuguese society led extremely sheltered lives, leaving their homes only to attend Mass. The view of the street offered release from their flowery prisons.



Many of these quintas were rented by their aristocratic Portuguese owners to British shippers and seasonal visitors. In 1845 Jeanne Wallas Penfold published an album of botanical watercolours depicting fruits and flowers from her garden at the Quinta da Achada. The book tells how some of the plants were introduced to the island's gardens by her friends. Geraniums and succulents were brought from South Africa, fuchsias and heliotropes from South America, agaves and salvias from Mexico and later from Australia arrived tree ferns, mimosas and eucalypts.