She was somewhat of a ‘hard’ woman, our grandmother.
She wasn’t tender, or anything like the grandmothers I used to read about in those inch-thick Enid Blyton books. We called her Nenek, and out of the four of us siblings I’d say she had the most difficult time with me.
I don’t blame her; I was a mischievous child. In fact I’d say now I admire her for it, having been able to handle so many playful creatures around the home with only a handful of bamboo canes and a very, very loud voice.
Apart from an unusually vivid mental image of her chasing me around the living room coffee table, cane in hand, and with the most determined look on her face, the next memory I have of Nenek is her sat on a wooden stool, tending to the crossandras that used to line the front of our family home.
Nenek’s garden was marvellous, the result of a passionate fervour for and disciplined obsession with plants. It was here where I first became acquainted with the tropics – with the plants that give meaning to the tropical.
Playing in her garden, amongst the dendrobiums and vandas she so easily beckoned to flower made the TRoPiCs feel very much entwined with my idea of what home meant.
AT HOME IN THE TROPICS, our launch collection, takes cues from my grandmother’s garden and all the beauty and warmth I drew from it. Featuring her favourite blooms – orchids & bougainvilleas – each arrangement has been designed based on a particular memory of home.
When I ask myself how and why I’d become so enamoured with flowers and plants, I’d think fondly on the evenings I’d spend in Nenek’s garden, playing and talking with figures I’d made out of the weeds around our lawn.
I think that was truly where FIBRE first bloomed, within a home and heart of the TRoPiCS.
Written by Tim