THE PALHEIRO
ABOUT an hour’s ride from the town, at a height of some 1,800 or 2,000 feet, is the Palheiro, formerly known as Palheiro de Ferreiro (Blacksmith’s Hut), the principal country place in the neighbourhood of Funchal, belonging to the same owner as the Quinta Santa Luzia. The road leads past many smaller villas, whose gardens have most of them fallen into decay, and only undergo a hurried process of tidying when their Portuguese owner comes to spend a few weeks away from the summer heat of Funchal.
Palheiro was not entirely laid out by its present owner, though the grounds have been very much enlarged and improved, and the house itself, having been destroyed by fire a few years ago, has been lately rebuilt. Some letters from Madeira, written by J. Driver and published in 1834, give the following interesting account of Palheiro, which in those days belonged to the family of Carvalhal.
“The grounds of Senhor Jose de Carvalhal are the finest in the island, possessing a level surface, which is very difficult to be met with here to any extent. This place was recommended to us for our first ride into the country, and after some delay in making choice of the ponies and burroquieros that we intended afterwards to patronize, we made our way eastward out of the city. Crossing a bridge over the deep bed of a river, we saw the ruins created by the great flood in 1803, when several hundred inhabitants were swept into the sea. We now ascended a steep and narrow road for a distance of two or three miles, passing several of the merchants’ houses, from all of which there is a commanding and beautiful view of the city and the bay. The Palheiro, lately the residence of Senhor Carvalhal, by far the richest hidalgo of the island, has been confiscated by the Miguelite Government. Senhor Carvalhal himself had some difficulty in effecting his escape; however, he got on board an English vessel in the bay, and is now residing in London. Upwards of 700 pipes of very choice and old wine were at once taken from his cellars, and sent to Lisbon to be sold on Government account. The house was ransacked, and his grounds are now (though this is of recent occurrence) fast going to ruin. There are a few soldiers stationed near the house to prevent any material damage, and these are now the only persons to be seen on this once splendid estate. The park, if we may so term it, is more in the English style than we expected to find it; but when we came to the orange, lemon, pomegranate and shaddock groves, which are in fine foliage and planted in the best order, we at once saw the effect of these Southern climes. The flower-gardens, though not abounding in that variety we might expect, are well arranged, but begin to show more of the ‘fallen state’ of things than the other parts of the grounds. The house itself is not on a large scale, yet it is built in good style and keeping with the place, as well as the chapel, which is a neat edifice at a short distance from the house. Senhor Carvalhal used to employ more than two hundred men on the estate, for the purpose of keeping it in order. He was a kind landlord, and much respected throughout the whole of the island. Let us, then, hope that Portugal will soon have a fixed Government, and that Senhor Carvalhal will return to his country, and again have the pleasure of enjoying his estates.”
The hope here expressed was fulfilled, and the family continued to live there until the estate changed hands and became the property of the present owner, in 1884.
Although on first acquaintance it is true that the grounds suggest those of an English park, possibly from the welcome presence of turf, and also from the fact that at that high elevation the deciduous trees are leafless throughout the winter, like Mr. Driver, we shall very soon discover many trees and shrubs that could not be grown in even the most southern parts of England, though many English shrubs and flowers flourish in the warmer climate.
There are two roads leading from the outer gate to the house. The lower road winds through a long avenue of camellia-trees, whose branches in January and February are laden with their single, double and semi-double blossoms, ranging in colour from pure white, through every shade of pink, to deep red. Along the higher road, beneath the trees, broad stretches of the deep green leaves of the Amaryllis belladonna give promise of beauties to come. In summer all trace of their foliage vanishes, and early in September the deep red stems and sheath of their flowers begin to appear. By the end of September their blush-coloured flowers will have developed; and so profusely do they flower that all through October in these higher regions the land is transformed by their rosy loveliness. Like the garden of Santa Luzia, Palheiro has been made the trial-ground of many an imported treasure, and many which did not flourish in the warmer and drier regions have succeeded admirably in the cooler and damper air of the hills.
The flower-gardens certainly show no signs of the “fallen state of things” under their present ownership, and a small enclosed garden a short distance from the house is a perfect treasure-house; though naturally at its best in spring and summer, it is never devoid of flowers. Here English daffodils, pansies, and polyanthuses grow side by side with many a bulb and plant which will just not stand the rigours of our English winters. The large-flowered violets, Princess of Wales and other varieties, flower in their thousands from November till April, with blooms so large that they suggest violas more than violets. Freezias and ixias have seeded themselves in the grass slopes of this little favoured garden, where the beds are enclosed by trim box hedges. At the corners or angles of the beds the box is cut into all sorts of fancy shapes, such as pyramids and ninepins. In the beds grow large masses of the pale yellow sparaxis, anemones of every shade, single, semi-double, or double, and the graceful little Cineraria stellata, in an infinite range of soft colouring. Or a whole bed is devoted to the deep purple Statice, the beautiful white Alstrœmeria peregrina, or some other chosen flower which gives a definite note to the colour scheme. In March two fine specimens of Magnolia conspicua are covered with their cup-like white and lilac blossoms, and stand out in sharp contrast to the deep emerald-green of the Araucaria braziliensis, which forms an admirable background to them, and is in itself one of the most beautiful of all trees. Near the magnolias a large shrub of Cantua buxifolia, with its bright red tube-like blossoms hanging in graceful bunches, provides a brilliant patch of colour. The lilac Iris fimbriata, with its branches of delicately veined flowers, seems to flourish in the shade, and though its individual blossoms are short-lived, they are so freely produced that for many weeks in the late winter and early spring the plants remain in beauty. One could linger for many a long hour in this peaceful spot, resting in an arbour completely formed of the clinging, twining Muhlenbeckia, which has grown into so dense a thicket that it provides welcome shade and shelter, or wandering from one little terrace to another, examining the endless treasures the beds contain; for, as the garden has a wealth of flowers all the summer, there are many things which, from being out of flower, might pass unnoticed.
Great beds of Azalea indica, and trees of different varieties of mimosa, bending under the weight of their golden blossoms, remind one that this is no English garden, while glades and banks show long vistas of white arum lilies, as Richardia or Calla Æthiopia are commonly called. Here these African lilies, which are also called lilies of the Nile, are completely naturalized, and bloom continuously for at least five or six months of the year.
A deep dell, shaded by mahogany and other trees, has provided a home for the tree-ferns of Australia, New Zealand, and Africa, and in some twelve or fourteen years they have made such astonishingly rapid growth that the little ravine is suggestive of the celebrated fern-tree gullies of Australia or Tasmania. The ivy, which hangs from tree to tree in long ropes, replaces the lianes of a tropical forest, and the banks are clothed with woodwardias and other ferns, while a few of the rarer native wild-flowers, such as the monster buttercup, Ranunculus grandifolia, and the giant fennel, have been introduced, and are thoroughly in keeping with their wild and natural surroundings. A path winds down the little valley following the bed of the stream, and on emerging from the deep shade of the fern-trees, broad masses of naturalized plants are revealed with every turn of the path. On a grassy slope, over which tower two or three grand old stone-pines, thousands upon thousands of golden lupins have sown themselves. A single specimen of a plant may often hardly be regarded or considered worthy of notice, but the same plant, when seen in great masses, may call forth universal admiration because of the wealth of colour it provides. In summer the agapanthus will send up innumerable heads of clear blue flowers, while the little Fuchsia coccinea seems to flower bravely at all seasons of the year. In order to show that even in this favoured land it is possible to have failures in the gardens, and importations from other climes do not always succeed, some rhododendrons, even the common ponticum, were pointed out to me as never having made themselves at home, and in a shady corner hundreds of our English primroses had been planted, but had pined away and died.
In another part of the garden the beautiful rhododendrons from Java are being given a trial; but possibly, just as the climate is too hot for the hardier varieties, it may prove too cold for those from tropical regions. The variety known as arboreum, with its large heads of deep crimson flowers, appreciates the climate, and has no spring frost to cut its blossoms, which so often mars the beauty of this very early-flowering rhododendron in England, where, for this reason, it only succeeds in sheltered situations. The large white variety, which is commonly called the Himalayan rhododendron, though, more correctly speaking, it is known as Edgeworthii, flourishes here. It was introduced from Sikkim to Europe in 1851. It is a shrub of somewhat straggling growth, with large wide-open pure white flowers, sometimes tinged with yellow or blush; they are produced in small clusters, not more than three or four together, and diffuse an overpoweringly strong scent.
Among new importations are a collection of Japanese cherry-trees, including the beautiful and graceful weeping variety and some of the double-flowered kinds, also the deep pink plums, which should all prove a success, as in the little flower-garden described above a large double-flowered pink peach-tree is the pride of the garden when in blossom.
Besides these so-called fruit-trees, which are only cultivated for their beautiful blossom, and bear no fruit, many fruit-bearing cherries, plums, and peaches have been planted in the more prosaic part of the garden; but the stone fruit, is only a partial success. The peaches seem to deteriorate when the trees have been more than a few years in the island. Possibly the pruning is at fault, or the fruit forms and ripens too quickly; and when the plum-trees are laden with fruit, a leste—the cruel, hot, scorching wind which the natives dread in summer—will blow for a few days, and shrivel the fruit and spoil the whole crop.
The orange-groves have vanished, destroyed by disease, which gradually spread from Funchal throughout the island, up to the higher land. The lack of enterprise common to all Southern races being a marked feature among the Portuguese, no combined effort was ever made to check its devastating progress.
The garden has no definite boundary, no unsightly garden fence, which is the stumbling-block of so many gardens. One can wander down through the pine woods, or up the hill, where, looking west, the whole bay and town of Funchal lies spread out like a map before you, or, looking east, the distant islands seem to provide a never-ending variety to the view. Sometimes the islands look dark against the sky, which means storms ahead; or sometimes they are wrapt in a soft haze, which means a promise of fine weather; or the setting sun may have caught and kissed them with her last departing rays, and made them blush a rosy-pink, and one is tempted to linger and watch the light gradually fade; but it is time to turn homewards, as in these Southern latitudes twilight is all too short, and darkness descends quickly over the land.