Class News

Pat Caviness ’64 created a spectacular garden in Koh Samui

September 12, 2021

Those of you who follow Patrick Caviness on Facebook know that for the past year he and Frederique have been re-creating the garden at their home in Koh Samui, Thailand. Here is how he described the project:

Over the last few years, we realized nature’s relentless jungle adjacent to our property had encroached and finally succeeded in overrunning our lower garden. From our villa veranda that overlooked our property, our garden looked like the natural jungle hillside on which we built our home sixteen years ago. So began our garden renovation project.

We hired a trusted friend and landscape architect, Faithongtae Thonsaeng, and his nine-person team (four men and five women) to reclaim and enhance our garden. Frederique and Faithong formed a plan to build two large new retaining walls, restore and extend pathways, and replant. Key goal — open up the view of the garden now blocked by trees and cut back burgeoning canopies, vines galore, and rapidly expanding bamboo and palm trees and integrate it with our villa.

The earliest days involved dramatically slashing the thick bamboo, moving enormous granite boulders (for later use in the natural stone retaining walls), drastically trimming trees, pulling up and replanting huge golden palms.

Once the crew had created some “elbow room,” they commenced building two natural-stone retaining walls. Among the crew’s many talented members were two first-rate stonemasons (a dying breed). They build walls the old-fashioned way with pulleys and wooden tripods to lift and drag the stones into place. Once in place, they chip away the edges of the stones so they fit naturally together. Watching them work, I was reminded how the ancient pyramids must have been built (one huge block at a time). Old pathways were leveled up and their steepness reduced by lowering the step height and creating gently looping “switchbacks.” Large cobblestones were used to build additional paths. One particularly lovely path was reconfigured to form a series of curves and paved with small river stones.

January 25: Now the hard work of digging up and moving giant boulders to form a natural stone retaining wall begins. The workers use an old-fashioned but effective wooden tripod and chain hoist to lift and move the heavy boulders scattered everywhere on the jungle floor.

February 5: The large retaining wall is almost finished. The gardeners use hoes to level up newly created flat areas. Once space is leveled up and sloped slightly to create a gentle rain runoff, the area will be filled with river pebbles.

February 10: We are at an in-between point. It doesn't look like it used to and it doesn't look anything like it is going to. It's hard to see progress. Still, we are happy with the decisions we made today with our landscape architect to "open up" the lower garden. Stay tuned. We will start to see the beginnings of the garden transformation in a few weeks.

February 17: The team is dealing with the “slow march" of gigantic boulders they drag across the ground. Often the boulders they dig up are much bigger than they thought. No problem. They install a bigger hoist, anchor the tripod to tall palm trees with heavy ropes, and start pulling the chain of the block and tackle. Sometimes it takes hours, even days, to move some of the stones 20 or 30 yards. No backhoes can get in this area. It’s all “handwork.” We are constantly in awe of the workmanship and persistence of these stonemasons and helpers; this is a rare group of talented and skilled men and women.

February 20: The team spent all day positioning one “anchor boulder” at one end of what will be the larger upper wall. I filmed the team lifting one massive boulder and positioning it exactly where it should go. To create a large space for the huge hunk of granite, the team realizes they have to remove much more dirt. And then comes the moment. The gigantic 6-ton granite stone is suspended Inches above the ground. Faithong carefully and precisely positions the boulder in place. With a final adjustment, he "twists" the suspended boulder into the exact spot.

March 2: Every rock that goes into the stone wall is carefully hand-washed, placed in a bucket, and carried over to one of the stonemasons building the wall. This is done to ensure the mortar sticks to the smaller rocks placed behind the larger "facing" stones to support them. I can't stress enough how much care the workers display with every step they take to make sure the wall lasts for the next 300 years or so.

March 11: The crew forms a bucket brigade and spends most of the morning backfilling, one bucket at a time, behind the wall using soil dug up earlier. An easy rhythm and steady unspoken teamwork go into slowly removing what was once an enormous pile of dirt in the middle of the work area.

March 18: Frederique and I are proud of the garden team. They’re doing an outstanding job. We ask Faithong and his team members to pose in front of the large curved wall. The team asked me to be in a photo with them. Even though I'm not an official member, I’ve been with them almost every workday so I appreciate their asking me to be in a picture with them.

March 2: Despite rain delays (we're now in the light monsoon), progress continues. The two new retaining walls have been completed. The team has commenced work on the paths. For years a huge tree has been smack dab in the middle of the path from our lower parking lot. Because the tree is also between two massive rocks, the team decided to remove it in what turned out to be a major effort. Once the tree is gone, work on the new path can continue across the lower garden and up a long set of steps to our villa.

April 14: Work has temporarily stopped due to the week-long Thai New Year called Songkran. I took a photo of Frederique watering and was struck by the sheer size difference between the massive boulder we call The Rhino Head and the tiny figure of Frederique.

May 9: We are almost at the end of our three-month garden project. The fully vaccinated crew leaves Monday. I have watched and marveled at how much teamwork they have shown every day. The women work every bit as hard as the men. Two or three times a day we walk around the garden with our landscape architect talking about little changes and complimenting him and his team. We have these massive boulders on our property. Now the garden planting and lighting accentuate them.

June 3: Today Frederique and I took a garden stroll in the cool of the early evening with Foxy to stretch our legs and relax. We have decided our garden is for walking through, watching the grass, bushes, and ground cover grow and seeing Foxy prance along the paths. It's for listening to birds trill and seeing butterflies in flight. Our garden is alive and it invites us in to enjoy its calm and serenity.