In The Garden Of Happiness

She finds joy and contentment in doting on her family and tending to her garden. Maricris Zobel reveals the secrets of making peace with her universe

- Bambina Olivares

From the outside, the Spanish-style home of Maricris Zobel, whose façade is drenched in the red-ochre tones of Andalucia, barely hints at what lies inside. Even as you enter, you catch only the briefest glimpse of a garden. It is only when you step into the lanai that you are able to set your eyes upon the lush expanse of green.

“I have heard this said, and I live by it,” Zobel says with her characteristic warmth and candour. “If you want to be happy for a day, you buy an outfit. If you want to be happy for a month, you get a lover. But if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, you have to tend a garden.”

In her beautiful tropical garden, with its Balinese-inspired pool on one side and a jewel of a poolhouse on the other, the mother of five and grandmother of five has found lasting bliss.

“A garden for me is the most relaxing, the most healing. I spend more time in my garden than I actually do inside my home! Let’s just say my kids know where to find me: they have to come out into the garden.”

Her garden is her sanctuary, a place for both contemplation and action. “I putter around, I trim, I plant. If a plant does not flower, I give it two years. If it doesn’t do well, it goes out!”

In tending her garden, she is guided by what her grandmother always said. There were two things a good garden always had: “an avocado tree, and a talcum plant. When I was a little girl, she had that Chinese powder that she mixed with the talcum plant. Smell it—it smells like verbena.”