SANDY GARDENS FOR THE LOVE OF PLANTS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (wrote December 2020)

Sandy Price never boasted of having a green thumb. She also had never planned to have a garden of her own. Yet in all the dozen places where she’s lived since moving to Kenya from New York over 50 years ago, she’s had a lush garden.

“Everywhere I’ve stayed, I found there were plants to be nurtured and to watch grow,” says this midwestern American woman who spent her earliest working years in Manhattan in the heart of the fashion world, being the personal assistant to one of the leading fashion designers in the US.

‘Bill Blass designed elegant clothes for high society and celebrities,” says Sandy who admits she had once dreamed of becoming a fashion designer herself. ‘But the next best thing was working for the best of the best,’ she says. But since coming to Kenya in 1969, she has evolved into a leading interior designer whose accessories are easily found at Spinners Web in Kitisuru.

Before that however, Sandy wore several professional hats, the first one being the founder-mother of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya. “It wasn’t my idea actually,” she says modesty. “It was Richard Leakey’s. He was director of National Museums of Kenya at the time and had this idea of starting wildlife clubs in Kenyan schools. But he knew no one to implement his plan until he met me. I started with three clubs and watched the numbers swell into the thousands that exist today.”

Sandy stayed with them for nearly two years, after which she joined African Wildlife Foundation, first as a volunteer, then eventually as director for all sub-Saharan Africa. But throughout those busy years, she always came home to her garden. “Wherever I stayed I had to be surrounded with plants,” she says. “The more the better.”

Having lived everywhere from Langata and Karen to Syokimau and Ngong, Sandy says her current cottage in Muthaiga is perfect for now. Already having stayed there for six years, she has turned a portion of her three-acre grounds into a manicured jungle garden. The rest, beyond the trees which were planted long before her moving in, grows wild.

She might never have taken to gardening if a friend hadn’t given her a seedling to plant. Then, practically overnight, this former urbanite was transformed into a gardener. For she had witnessed the miracle of nature when the seedling grew to a size and shape she could hardly recognize. She was hooked on gardening from then on.

Asked where she gets most of her plants, Sandy describes herself as ‘an accidental collector.’

“I have friends who bring me plants they pick up from various places,” she says. But she adds that she’s not fussy and doesn’t care if they’re indigenous or not. “I’m more concerned with whether they are beautiful,” says the woman who was picked by ‘Glamor’ magazine as a teenager to feature in the magazine as one of ‘the ten best dressed high school girls in America”.

Her garden is filled with her favorite plants, some of which she can name, like her Begonias and Bromeliads; others she cannot. She also has scads of aloes, many of which she has potted and kept tastefully grounded on the edge of her veranda. Others are all over her intensely green garden.

“I also have loads of succulents since I know they are resilient and hold up well in drought,” she says, pointing to one giant pot with a glass top covered in miniature pots filled with her favorite succulents Each tiny pot has a clay chameleon crawling up its side.

On the far side of her veranda, Sandy has filled the land with broad-leafed plants, including assorted palms, ornamental banana trees, and several lovely Birds of Paradise.

Sandy can’t identify many of the trees on the grounds by name. But she’s not bothered by their anonymity. They simply give her tremendous joy. And since she often entertains friends on her veranda, they all have a fabulous view of her Ficus tree, red, white, and pink bougainvillea’s, and countless leafy green shrubs.

Sandy is also a big fan of indigenous arts and crafts. To illustrate her taste, she has a life-sized hand-carved leopard stationed at the top of her driveway. It’s the first thing you see after catching a glimpse of her jungle garden. But the leopard is also there, Sandy says, to commemorate a time-gone-by when leopards walked freely in Nairobi National Park. Sadly, they don’t anymore.