THERE ARE 11 ACRES of a fully sustainable property in St Lucy.
But it wasn’t always so, said owner of Fustic House Kit Braden.
There was a time when the run-off from heavy rains would take the top soil with it into the pool and over the bluff.
There was a time, as well, when all of the garden’s fertiliser and mulch had to be bought.
But no more, said Braden; now the run-off is channelled away and the gardeners make their own fertiliser and mulch. And the 120 photovoltaic panels power the expansive property.
“When I first came here, which was in 2012, one of the things that really struck me was that we were paying a really huge amount of money to have green stuff taken off the site in a truck,” he recalled.
“I said that’s got to stop now because we were paying to bring compost in. So we were paying to take stuff out and paying to bring the compost in. So now we are making the compost. Everything we cut and it’s huge piles of stuff every day.”
Braden said such recycling and reuse was especially important since Fustic House’s gardens were literally a shovel blade away from rock.
“The water can’t go down. It just runs off.”
Owner of Fustic House Kit Braden (right) chatting with Barbados Horticultural Society president Orson Daisley (left) and coordinator of the Open Garden programme Jennifer Weetch.
Braden was talking to Heather-Lynn’s Habitat as his garden was on show as part of the Barbados Horticultural Society’s (BHS) Open Garden programme last Sunday. In addition, the expansive house was the property on show in the Barbados National Trust Open House programme yesterday.
“We have a big lawn at the back of the house on rock. And if you get real rain, it floods. In the old days it flowed down and it flooded the swimming pool, and then it flowed down and took all the top soil with it.”
To take care of that, Braden said a channel was built to take the water away to the sea and the area was terraced with walls.
“Probably a hundred tonnes of rock and a hundred tonnes of top soil have come in in the last year to stabilise. Then we planted it all up again,” he explained.
The fact that the garden is also located on aquifers also helps with keeping it green.
“We have a well and aquifer so we can water the garden. And we are pumping our own water with our own electricity.”
The garden is a spacious, calming, verdant spot in St Lucy. Braden admits he took inspiration from the garden belonging to Anthony Hunte of Hunte’s Garden.
“It was always a beautiful garden,” he said, adding this was the second time it had featured on the BHS’ programme.
Meanwhile, Braden said the original 1660 plantation house, formerly called Seaview, had been extended by acclaimed designer Oliver Messel. He designed the extensions to the main house and created a stunning swimming out of the cliff face rock.