The MGS Garden at Sparoza

The photograph at the top of this page shows the Succulent Terraces in March (Photo Lucinda Willan)

The garden at Sparoza has a quiet but steadily growing reputation in the gardening world, its renown not reflecting grandiosity or expense but rather its philosophy of matching the aesthetic sensitivity of the gardener with the limitations and opportunities offered by the difficult and typically mediterranean conditions of this Attica hillside. It is, in other words, a place where beauty and climate compatibility go hand in hand.

Entrance to Sparoza

This garden is an important example of one of the earliest private waterwise mediterranean gardens to be created, and has one of the most significant collections of mediterranean plants in Greece. The three-acre garden is currently cared for by the Head Gardener, Lucinda Willan.

Students are accepted for short-time work-experience in the garden. This studentship is regarded by past students as an exceptional educational opportunity since chances to gain experience in a Mediterranean garden are very few and far between.

Read an article here by Caroline Harbouri in the 100th edition of The Mediterranean Garden Journal “Sparoza: What the Garden Is (and Isn’t)”.

Sparoza is a garden with a distinguished background. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt bequeathed the garden to the Goulandris Natural History Museum, but the MGS holds a long-term lease over the house and garden, and shares in the maintenance costs.

Jaqueline Tyrwhitt

The garden was founded by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt who came to Greece in the early 1970s on retirement from her post as Professor of City Planning at Harvard University. Having chosen to buy a plot of land on a dry, stony hillside overlooking the Mesogeio plain, Jacky Tyrwhitt decided that it would be pointless to try to follow the gardening practices of her native England in such an inhospitable environment. She therefore set out to create a garden using plants which came from, and were thus adapted to, the mediterranean-climate areas of the world. This was a radical plan at the time and the planting of the garden proceeded by trial and error. Her book Making a Garden on a Greek Hillside describes how she turned a windswept hill with a few “sheep-nibbled bushes” into a garden.

Read an appreciation of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt here written by her former assistant Diana Farr-Louis.

Sally Razelou

Twenty odd years later, when Miss Tyrwhitt had been dead for ten years, another formidable lady gardener arrived at Sparoza. The new tenant, Mrs Sally Razelou, found herself perfectly in tune with the philosophy of the garden’s creator, and continued to seek ways of creating beauty by working with, rather than against, the natural climate and conditions. She gathered around her a small, multi-national following of like-minded gardeners who eventually felt the need to pool their resources and experiences and produce a regular publication on gardening in mediterranean-climate countries. Thus in 1994 the Mediterranean Garden Society was born and its members have produced its quarterly journal, The Mediterranean Garden, since Summer 1995. The garden at Sparoza became the MGS garden; its mission is to demonstrate how a garden of beauty can be created without the use of fertilizers and pesticides and with the minimum of irrigation during the summer drought.

Read more about Sally Razelou and the Fund created in her memory here.

Experimentation is still very much a facet of the garden. New plants are initially tested within the irrigated terraces, after which those that show potential are propagated and moved out into harsher positions. The rich natural flora of the hillside continues to flourish side by side with introductions both of other Greek native plants and of tough plants from other mediterranean-climate regions. The summer garden, rather than being an alien imposition of lush green upheld by lavish and unsustainable use of water, is a celebration of the natural aestivation of drought-tolerant plants.

Read an article in The Age newspaper about the vision of Jacqueline Tyrwhitt and how the house and garden have evolved.

Here is Lucinda Willan talking about her first year at Sparoza and her memories of Sally Razelou.

In the archived (non-responsive) section can be found a detailed history of the garden by Sally Razelou, former student gardener Isabel Sanders' blog A Year in the Garden, an introduction to the garden (including journal articles by Sally, Jennifer Gay and Caroline Harbouri plus images by Frosso Vassiliadis and Davina Michaelides) and much more.