Life & Work

Wangeci’s uber-green garden

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Indigenous trees and colourful shrubs invite you into the garden. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU

The Gitobu family have only lived in Rosslyn Heights for the last six-and-a-half years. But already they have trees growing in their yard that have shot sky high. From their three Thika palms to bottle brush trees, their front and backyards are filled with green leafy foliage in the form of trees and fast-growing shrubs.

“That’s because I took my mother’s advice and started planting mainly indigenous trees right after we moved in,” says Wangeci Gitobu, who’s really glad she listened to her mum, a retired nutritionist and former school cateress who brought Wangeci and her siblings up eating fresh fruits and vegetables from her family’s garden patch.

“We didn’t pay much attention to her gardening when we were growing up but I guess her passion for gardening has rubbed off on me,” says the mother of two who’s currently got papaya, mango, lemon, tree tomato and avocado trees growing in her yard along with a wide array of other types of trees and herbs.

One of the first trees she got from her mother was a Christmas pine that Wangeci immediately planted outside the family’s front door. That tree is thriving but so are two other Christmas trees that she’s subsequently planted since moving into the gated estate that once belonged to Kenya’s former Foreign Affairs minister, Munyua Waiyaki.

“I like to buy whole trees at Christmas time because then we can replant them and possibly even re-use them another year,” she said.

Adding that she prefers getting her trees from local nurseries rather than roadside tree salesmen, she said it was because she feels the nurseries tend to look after their trees a bit more carefully than ad hoc tree dealers do.

But she hasn’t bought all her trees from nurseries. Often she’ll buy seedlings which she brings home where they can grow with the help of her part-time gardener Newton and the compost he makes in the backyard, right next to what she calls her seedling shamba.

Currently, that space is tiny compared to the Gitobu’s half-acre plot; but for now it’s quickly becoming a thriving vegetable patch where she grows everything from sukuma wiki, green peppers and onions to dhania, tomatoes and spinach.

But frankly, she seems to take more interest in her spice garden which she’s situated closer to the house (“just outside the kitchen,” she adds). And while she doesn’t claim in any way to be a gourmet cook, Wangeci makes use of her spice garden on a regular basis.

For instance, she says the basil goes well with Italian tomato-based dishes while the rosemary is good with lamb; the dill is delicious in potato salad and of course the mint makes a refreshing drink just by adding a bit of sugar and a few tea leaves.
Until we took a walk around her lovely garden, Wangeci says she hadn’t quite realised how trees played such a dominant role in her back and front yards.

Acknowledging that her garden had more trees, shrubs and grass than flowers, she nonetheless took me to see her mini-rose garden which she’s surrounded with a lovely hedge (shaped like the mathematical symbol for infinity) that clearly showed the roses occupied a pride of place in her backyard.

The other mini-garden that Wangeci designed was especially for succulents. “I can’t explain why I like them so much but whenever I see one, I’m inclined to take it home.”

But probably one of the most fascinating features of the Gitobu’s garden is the septic tank which is completely hidden by the same Duranta hedges that surround her roses as well as the entire Gitobu estate. But the hedges are just one aspect of the tank’s creative concealment.

The other is the creeper vines that were planted originally on the edge of the tank’s metal lid, but which have subsequently stretched themselves across the tank’s top making it look almost like a special, even ‘sacred’ space.

And even where she put down cement slabs to extend the size and shape of her backyard veranda, she’s made sure to beautify with a slew of large clay pots, each one filled with various types of ferns.

So while she claims not to have grown up with a green thumb like her mom’s, Wangeci’s garden is ultra-green and bound to get greener still since her seedlings are growing fast and once the holidays come and go, she’s sure to plant another Christmas tree in the family’s backyard.