THEY CONSIDER their four-and-a-half acres a tribute to a slain friend.
For the Hansen-Tangers of Chummery, West Ridge Road, Sandy Lane, St James, that day in September 2015 when their friend Stanley Michelini was killed was a sad day for them and their garden. So the February 7 showing, as part of the Barbados Horticultural Society’s Open Garden Programme, was a tribute to him, they said.
“We had a man, [who] sadly enough was killed . . . and he had been extremely good us,” Tore told EASY magazine.
“So for us it was a sad moment when we heard about what happened to him. So (the open garden showing) is definitely a tribute to him,” he said.
At Chummery, there are paths meandering their way through brilliantly-hued shrubbery borders and deep green manicured lawns, running over a bridge where fish flitted and darted about, around lily ponds with the water of a fountain dancing in the afternoon sun before terminating at the verandah of the property.
Tore and his wife Unni told EASY the entire property was six acres, of which the garden made up four and a half.
Unni explained the garden boasted everything from two stands of mahogany trees, to the towering African tulip trees, orchid and flamboyant trees to almond, mango, soursop, bay laurel and ackee trees.
Tore said the ponds also contained a variety of lilies some of which, he believed, were the only ones of their kind on the island.
For Hansen-Tangers, the garden has been a work in progress for the seven years they have been living on the island.
And Tore heaped all the praise for the property’s maintenance on his team of gardeners.
“I’m extremely proud of the gardeners – three gardeners and a head gardener. We have been lucky to have an extremely good relationship with the gardeners and we are very, very happy because of all the places we have been, this is the only place we are feeling home, apart where we are from in Norway,” Tore said, adding they were blessed with an old water well and an old swimming pool that they had converted into a reservoir.
One of the visitors to the garden, Canadian landscape artist Ollie Fein was full of praise.
“It’s just incredible,” he enthused.
“The intense features – all the water gardens and ponds and the mass planting,” he said. (HLE)
