The land was bare when Anaïs started working on it. A slope of red soil, a few wild trees, some invasive species that had taken over the edges. Not much to work with.
Anaïs is a landscape architect — you can see her practice at anais.earth — and she treated the garden the way she treats client projects: site analysis first, plant palette second, nothing added without a reason.
The volcanic rocks were already there, buried under the soil. We dug them out and used them to build the retaining walls — the long stone lines that terrace the slope and stop everything from sliding down in the rain. It took weeks. The rocks are heavy. The walls are solid.
The planting was designed to produce: mango, guava, papaya, passion fruit — and banana in three varieties: the yellow, the frécinette, the cancanbou. Fruit the neighbours recognise, fruit that fills the garden with the right kind of mess at the right time of year. Between the productive plants, the colour: anthurium, flamboyant, heliconia, bougainvillea. Anaïs planted things that bloom in sequence so there’s always something open.
Three years on, the garden looks like it’s been there for ten. That’s the goal — not a landscaped garden that reads as designed, but a place that feels inevitable.
Samsam has her corner of it. We let her keep it.
