Artist who draws inspiration from her home garden

Alan and Mary Collis moved into their home in Loresho in 1976. The home, which sits on a 2.5 acre plot, came with an unkempt, overgrown garden which ended at Mathare River.

Soon Alan took up the role of restoring the garden, it all started with two thorn trees, a flame tree, several palms and a monkey puzzle tree.

Today the beautiful garden is a source of inspiration for Mary, one of Kenya’s leading abstract expressionist artists and the co-founder of Rahimtullah Museum of Modern Art (RaMoMa).

She founded it with Carol Lees and currently being revived on Mfangano Street in the Rahimtullah Library.

RIOTOUS HUES

Mary admits she is not, and never was, a gardener but it’s in her garden that she draws inspiration. As a colourist, she favours gardens that are rich in a wide variety of riotous hues giving the example of the late Erica Boswells garden, founder of the former Jax fashion house.

“We left Just about half of our land (2.5 acres) to remain as it was, wild and overgrown, which has a natural beauty of its own, especially as all of those trees are indigenous to this area of Nairobi,” says Mary, who has been painting her own as well as other people’s gardens for many years.

She loves the variegated shades of green that she finds in her own garden.

Her garden boasts a variety of shrubs, succulents and the majestic Monkey Puzzle tree, known as the Araucaria araucana or the Chilean Pine, which seems to crown her front lawn with a dazzling display of abundant verdant vines that hug and spread out widely around the base of a tree.

BIRDS ADORE

The trunk of the 38 year old tree rises strong, thick and erect with the leafy green branches that veritably explode at the top of the puzzle tree extend in the sky almost as widely as the vines on the ground.

For Mary, the only tree in her garden that can match the Monkey Puzzle for majesty and strength is the Mugumo tree (Fig tree). “It’s been here long before we arrived so we have no intention of ever chopping it down,” said the second generation Kenyan.

One of her favourite shrubs in her back yard is an Indian Almond, a large tropical tree known as Terminalia catappa, which she says the birds adore. They are always hanging around it, especially as it’s not far from the bird feeder, she says.

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