Ticino garden earns top award for British ex-diplomat

Nerine hybrids in the prize-winning Vico Morcote garden. Sir Peter Smithers

A retired British diplomat has won a prestigious award in Switzerland for the garden he has created outside his home in Canton Ticino.

By any standards, Sir Peter Smithers has led a varied and active life. He has held senior diplomatic posts in Europe and North America, and worked as naval intelligence agent for MI6 with James Bond-creator, Ian Fleming. He also had spells as a member of parliament and secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

But somehow he has found the time to excel at his life-long hobby – gardening.

Now 87, Sir Peter has had green fingers since the age of four, and his horticultural efforts have culminated in the garden outside his home overlooking Lake Lugano in the village of Vico Morcote.

And that garden has been described as “a miracle of balance” by the Swiss national heritage organisation, which has just awarded an annual “Schulthess” prize worth SFr15,000 ($9,000) to Sir Peter for his plant collection and its surroundings.

“The house is closely integrated into the garden,” he told swissinfo, “so that when you’re in the house you almost feel as you’re in the garden. We’ve been careful to keep the planting in harmony with the mountains across the lake, which are deciduous woodlands of chestnuts and oak. We haven’t put anything like conifers or palms between us and the skyline because that would have divorced us from the scenery.”

Part of Sir Peter’s philosophy is that a garden should be a source of pleasure and not a burden. It should therefore be designed and planted to reduce labour to a minimum.

That’s why he designed the Vico Morcote garden as an artificial eco-system. Plants support one another, fertilise themselves and – to some extent – control pests such as slugs and destructive insects.

It is awash in colour, with over 10,000 species including magnolias, tree peonies, camellias, rhododendrons and nerines. Not only has he received acclaim for his work as a bulb hybridiser – he has also won awards from such bodies as the Royal Horticultural Society for his photographs of the plants.

Sir Peter says the soil of Canton Ticino is chaotic: “If you look at the geographical map, it changes almost every half-kilometre. We have nice light acid soil here, yet on the mountains across the lake it’s alkaline. But if you want a really fine gardening climate, Ticino’s is the best in Europe.”

About his national heritage award, he says he wants to donate the money to Vico Morcote: “The garden grew out of the village soil, so now I would like to find a way of incorporating the prize in that soil, for example through ornamental planting.”

by Richard Dawson