Green Room

Surrounded by lush paddy fields in south-western Sri Lanka, this magical garden has a fascinating past and continues the legacy of its eccentric creator. 

- Georgina Reed

If the stone garden walls of the Brief garden in Sri Lanka could talk, they’d have plenty of stories to tell. They’d speak of lavish parties attended by the who’s-who of Sri Lankan society, long and lingering gin and tonic afternoons on the verandah, and eclectic gatherings of international artists, politicians and local plantation owners. They’d speak, too, of the artistic flair of the man who created them – Bevis Bawa, older brother of the famed architect Geoffrey. The Brief garden is a Bawa masterpiece.

Bevis moved to Brief as a young man in the late 1920s. The 80-hectare rubber plantation owned by his parents (it was named Brief after a successful legal case won by his lawyer father) was where Bevis, who had shown little interest in studying, was to become a planter. Soon after moving in, Bevis began gardening. “He just started landscaping his backyard. The garden grew and grew, as did the house,” says Dan de Silva, son of Dooland de Silva, Bevis’s former assistant and garden manager, and now owner of Brief. “He says in his autobiography that the garden and the house grew until he ran out of money!”