Discovering a botanical paradise in Greece

The artist Konstantin Kakanias first told me about the garden in Pallini belonging to the well-known Athens antiques dealer, Eleni Martinou. Kakanias never quite described it, but I have been friends with him for long enough to know that his suggestions are always worth investigating. The month of July is not the time to visit gardens in Greece, as the summer heat has taken its toll and the plants, for the most part, are past their best. Yet because of my friend’s recommendation, one very sunny and hot July morning a few years ago found me driving east of Athens to make my first visit and to meet Martinou.

She is not your archetypal Greek. Though very warm and welcoming, Martinou is reserved and quiet, almost shy. Nevertheless, the moment we met I sensed in her a demure steeliness that must have provided her with the strength and focus needed to create her magnificent garden. As my hostess showed me around, we moved slowly, partly because of the heat but mostly because moving at any speed would have meant missing out on some aspect of her enchanting endeavour.

When she first saw the land—cascading along a rocky slope looking south toward the Messoghia Plain and the Aegean Sea—it was scorched and scarred. In the past, a pine forest had reigned supreme, but after countless wildfires, it had become a rather desolate space. With this landscape as her canvas and with her friend the architect Charles Shoup as her accomplice, Martinou set out to create a place where she could let her imagination and her love for plants and nature run wild. Today the slope is covered by a vast array of Mediterranean flora growing—thriving, to be precise, thanks to the age-old method of trial and error—in a series of garden rooms devised by Shoup, anchored by follies and fountains to great dramatic effect.

On that first visit, as I surveyed the immensity and beauty of Martinou’s undertaking, it dawned on me that the grounds were something of a mirage: part botanical compendium, part pleasure garden of follies, and water features—vast in its dimensions, but intimate and poetic in its every corner.

Feature image: @hyper.hypo.athens/Instagram

Picture 1 and 2: @hyper.hypo.athens/Instagram

This piece originally appeared in the April 2023 print edition of Town & Country, USA.