By Paul Topping

The road to Brief Gardens is somewhat narrow, with many turns and today somewhat wet. The road to paradise is never easy. On my previous visit, there was a tourist coach from which people were being transferred to a string of Tuk-tuks so they could navigate the narrow road to the garden entrance. There was a lot of confusion and different entry prices depending on what passport/visa you held. On this visit, one hour before closing, there are no queues, no coaches, and no chaos. We are greeted well and told that as we were in, we could stay beyond closing time.

In Kalawila, a village near Beruwala, is the much-visited Brief Garden. On regular visits to Bentota on the west coast of Sri Lanka, I have contemplated visiting this garden paradise with its wild history and celebrity owner. Twenty years later, I make it twice in six months to The Noah's Ark of Flora.

In 1949, a gentleman called Bevis Bawa, brother of the more famous Geoffrey, was gifted a rubber plantation of from his mother, Bertha Schrader. The first garden however had began in 1929 by Bawa's father who served in the military and practiced as a lawyer . After one particularly successful legal brief, he made some money, hence the name of the garden and home.

Bevis then developed the house that stands on a slight hill in the five-acre garden today. It’s a mixture of a tropical forest/park and a European-style garden, with lawns, hedges, ponds, and random areas that no doubt were used for parties and entertaining. Bevis Bawa was said to have been a bit of an eccentric noted for his landscape gardening abilities. He had many visitors to his home, some famous, such as Sir Lawrence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Agatha Christie, and many more. There was a foreign friend, Donald, who dropped into Brief Garden house to visit Bawa for a short stay and actually stayed five and a half years. 

The garden is now a walkway to the house; it has many cul-de-sacs, lots of stairs, naked statues, ponds, and a communal Greek-style bathing area. Perhaps the house and gardens make it the most talked about private garden in Sri Lanka. It opened to the public in 1969.

We spend more time in the house than in the garden on this visit. There is a fantastic collection of art, some from Sri Lankan artists who became famous. Many pieces are very collectible today. There are lots of photographs, some showing the visitors and one showing a collection of cars Bawa had driven. Lots of naked bodies are depicted in paintings, some positioned on the sofas, I think this is to stop people from sitting on the antique furniture. We didn't take the afternoon tea or the evening meal option, but it was a pleasure to talk to the staff who had a host of stories to tell. One had looked after Bevis when he had become blind. The staff have been well looked after since Bevis died in 1992.

Bevis was born in 1909 and was a Ceylonese soldier, a major in the British Army, who fought in World War II. He served as Aide-de-Camp to four Governors of Ceylon. He was most renowned as a landscape architect from Sri Lanka. He was said to be one of the tallest men on the island at 6 foot seven inches. For those of you from Sri Lanka who ask what school he went to, I know you think it’s important…it was Royal College. Though when he finished his formal education, he became a trainee planter. He was, however, intelligent and well-connected with a flair for art. 

You need a couple of hours to tour the garden and the house in detail. They have a maximum number of visitors on the site at any one time, so if you get your timing wrong, your wait could be longer than your tour. If you are into history, amazing art (in some cases collectible), or beautiful gardens, it's well worth the visit. The house is very open style. This is a live museum; but only a few places to sit down.

So, having been there twice this year I am very sure I’ll be back with some of our many foreign visiting friends this year . Remember the bumpy road to paradise is always worth the effort .

I’ll leave you with The Whinging Pome Random Rule No. 310: “Never delay what you can do today, you may be dead tomorrow.”