自我介绍

I am an Englishman and horticulturist with an early predilection for country life. I am deeply attached to cultural pursuits, but feel they can be best savored in the countryside, so tending and cultivating a garden is my primary occupation. I relish and delight in good environments and am appalled by degraded and abused ones. When an opportunity arose whereby I could choose where to live, having travelled fairly extensively, I settled on this place, Anjanad, in the Anamalai mountains of South India. Not only are we situated at the highest zone of the Western Ghats but we are also surrounded by extensive areas of nature reserve and sanctuaries. We are fortunate that historically the western Ghats have been sparsely populated and that large stretches of primary forest prevail. Recognition of their value and efforts to safeguard forests are as advanced, if not more so in India than in most other highland zones in the tropics and subtropics. Indeed, in most other highland regions forests have been decimated over hundreds of years. In view of this I wished to dedicated my life to restoring this one on land that had formerly been occupied by Eucalyptus grandis, lemon grass and scrub. Fortunately we share a boundary with the ancient shola forests, so that the woodland merges seamlessly. In 15 years time this should be one of the great gardens of South India, but even now it is better than anywhere else that I know (making me rather averse to traveling).