THERE WAS an elusive scent in the air in Gibbes Hill, St Peter.
A headily sweet smell pervaded the atmosphere, leading you around by the nose as you tried to isolate its source.
It was not coming from the bright red or sultry pink flowers of the Crowns of Thorns that were vying for attention as other succulents formed an adoring border at their feet/roots; neither was the fragrance wafting from the mature bougainvillea that were busily showing off for the humans who were gawking before them.
The scent was actually coming from underfoot, from the dropped flowers of a towering Brazil Nut that dominates the garden of Ole Dam Mikkelsen.
It was the perfect introduction to a spread that was once an abandoned cane field that straddled the border between St Peter and St James.
“There was nothing here when I came here. It was an abandoned cane field and then I started planting,” the Danish-born Mikkelsen said of that time 33 years ago.
“I shook my palm and they fell,” he said laughing, as he shook his hand, mimicking the scattering of seeds, when asked if there was a particular design to his garden.
Owner of the garden at Gibbes Hill, St Peter, Ole Dam Mikkelsen (left), greeting fellow Gibbes resident and gardening enthusiast Keith Simmons QC, while Simmons’ wife Lucille looks on.
Dam Mikkelsen said that he started with a ficus. Today, that tree has been joined by 14 different kinds of palms – from royal to hurricane to bottle; ixora, many varieties of crotons, Pride of India, many colours of desert rose, as well as orchids and frangipani.
His palms are all planted in groups of three and he likes them small.
“I like palms but when they get to be like this (large), they are not so pretty any more. They are rather nice when they are small.
“You see the bottle palms?” he asked as he pointed them out. “I planted three together. The fox tail palm, I also have three. It gives a nice group, instead of one. And three coconuts on the front lawn,” he added.
Everything green is kept satiated with water from a well on the property.
“We are irrigating the place. We keep it green. I don’t want to see it wither down,” he told Heather-Lynn’s Habitat, adding that this year was the rainiest he had seen in 33 years.
Ole Dam Mikkelsen’s garden grows on the soil of what was once an abandoned cane field.
Dam Mikkelsen went on to say his three-acre garden was a “two-man job”.
It was spring, summer and fall all year around here, he said, when compared to his native Denmark.
“So some trees are flowering and some trees drop their leaves, somebody drop the seeds and everything grows very quick.”
However, one problem he identified was that many people did not know the conditions their plants favoured.
He told a story of planting crotons in a spot which only had a “broomstick” of a tree.
Then the girth of the tree expanded and the crotons had to be moved to another place of full sunlight.
“So what I am seeing a lot of people do wrong here, they put the plants that should be in the shade in the sun, and the other (way),” he said.