The beginning

I bought 40 perches (3,319 square metres, or a quarter acre) of land at Pattiniwatte on the hill of Pattinigodella at Poré, in the Hewagam county. Poré is part of the town area of Athurugiriya.

The land lies approximately 15 km from the municipal limits of Colombo and 12 km from the Parliament building at Sri Jayawardena Pura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka.

I actually bought 4 plots of land, of 10 perches each, my intention being to build a house on two of them. I didn’t envisage a ground area of more than 150 m² (1,500 sq ft) , so the remainder would provide a large garden.

While waiting for such time as I would be able to build a house, at the behest of that venerable beauty, my older sister, I decided to plant the garden. I wanted trees and I wanted flowers. I wanted fruit and vegetables and tubers and spices.

My sister was up to scratch (as should be anyone who wishes to make a career in the dark art of architecture and town planning) with Vaastu and Feng Shui. So I read up on them both.

The first order of business was to build a fence around the land, to prevent cattle and water buffalo from entering and destroying the plantation. There was a herd of water buffalo and a few head of neat cattle around.

For this I used plastic-covered chain-link fencing, supported by round concrete posts at 2.5 metre (8 ft) intervals. I chose green because it would blend most with the background and (I hoped) give an impression of not being there.

Below the land was an area reserved by the developer for public space. It was likely to become a playground, so the chain-link fencing would allow me to see into the playground and give an impression of more space. Besides, it is not as forbidding as barbed wire...

Unfortunately, the developer built an ugly big water tank smack in the centre of the public space.

So then I had to think of planting trees in front of it to obscure this ghastly structure.

The horrid box on stilts can be seen to the right of centre in the photograph.