Waterwise garden at Ariant

That October, Heidi came and spent eight nights with us in Pasadena. We had a full calendar of visits to public and private gardens and meetings and social occasions with individuals active in the community and possibly interested in the work of the MGS.

The next October (2000), Marilyn and I went to the AGM in Palermo, where Katherine Greenberg took Heidi’s place as President of the MGS. Immediately after that AGM Katherine, Marilyn and I, and Heidi spent five days touring Sicily, having a good time meeting still more interesting people and visiting still more notable gardens, both public and private. 

The house at Ariant with the mountain backdrop

The house at Ariant

Next, in October 2002, the Southern California Branch hosted the AGM. For that, Heidi spent another five nights with us in Pasadena.

Altogether, during those four years, Marilyn and I had spent about a month with Heidi in Pasadena, at Ariant and in Sicily. Later we saw Heidi at several AGMs, and we made several more visits to Ariant as well. From almost the very beginning, we considered Heidi a very good friend.

Garden making use of natural features

A few things we noted at Ariant:

• Heidi’s husband Enrique was always a considerate and genial host.
• One day we had a delightful picnic lunch at a casita down at the Mediterranean shore, where Heidi gathered salt from dried pools of seawater and did much of her writing.
• Another time we were intrigued to see Heidi, in the interest of effective pest control, move some ducks from one fenced growing field to another. (Man-made pesticides weren’t appreciated at Ariant.)
• The meals at Ariant were wonderful, including the freshest possible vegetables and fruit, all grown right there.

Path through the garden

Heidi cared tremendously about nature. It was always interesting to be in her garden with her, seeing how she approached it, how she looked at it and how she always worked with nature, not against it. How she saw her garden taught us a lot. She had wonderful stories about how, after all her years with Enrique in Peru, she evolved as a gardener in the mediterranean climate, with its cool, damp winters and long, hot, dry summers – and little if any water other than that provided by nature.

Walking through the garden

Heidi was always very practical and down-to-earth in her approach to her garden. She learned from experience what each plant in her garden needed and wanted in order to thrive. She understood plant communities. She saw nature as a teacher. She wanted her plants to be healthy. She had a strong aesthetic sense and a good eye – for details, the big picture and everything in between. In her garden, the hand of man was practically invisible. She wanted individual plants, groups of plants and indeed her entire garden to be beautiful, always natural, never contrived - and she succeeded spectacularly. We weren’t the least surprised to learn that the government of Spain declared hers to be the best (or most beautiful?) garden in all of Spain. 

Another path through the garden

When she travelled, she usually had with her a special suitcase to transport home interesting plants she discovered along the way.

Heidi played an important role in getting the MGS off to a strong start. Among other things, she saw the potential of a good network of international branches to increase the value and impact of the MGS, and she worked hard and effectively to develop branches in California and Australia, helping to make the MGS a meaningful resource for gardeners in mediterranean-climate regions around the world. 

Heidi Gildemeister

Her two books - Mediterranean Gardening, A Waterwise Approach and Gardening The Mediterranean Way, How To Create a Waterwise, Drought-tolerant Garden - were also an important help to those wanting to garden successfully in the world‘s mediterranean-climate regions.

Heidi’s sense of humour was gentle, and in an understated way she always seemed pleasantly elegant, dignified and reserved.

Marilyn and I have long observed that individuals who have a close, long and deep connection with nature tend to be healthy, happy, reasonable, long-lived, calm, realistic, thoughtful, serious (but not too serious), sound, effective and likable. Heidi was a perfect example of that.

Natural garden

We liked, admired and appreciated her very much indeed. Knowing her as we did was a great pleasure, a rare honour and a true privilege.

THE MEDITERRANEAN GARDEN is the registered trademark of The Mediterranean Garden Society in the European Union, Australia, and the United States of America

Data Protection Consent

website designed and maintained
by Hereford Web Design