How did Mary's garden grow?

It's been far too long since my last post. I leave Cairo in five days, and then it's back to the US to start writing... a daunting, but exciting task. I have a couple thoughts about war/revolution and memorialization that I've been meaning to post, but while those are still in the works, here is my most recent entry from the Maadi Messenger. The April issue was on gardening, so I did a bio of one of my favorite former residents - Mary Stout.

As I have learned more and more about the history of Ma’adi, there are a few distinct figures who manage to emerge from the sources, and the more I read, the more I get a sense that I know them. Among Ma’adi’s strongest historical personalities is Mary Stout. She was a wife, a mother, an American, and a world traveler. More than anything, however, she has left a trail of sources that present her as Ma’adi’s consummate gardening expert.

In a town of gardens and gardeners, appropriately residing in Cairo’s garden city, Stout continues to be an authority on gardening in subtropical climates. Sir Robert Greg, chairman of the Egyptian Horticultural Society wrote of her, “Mrs. Stout is one of the pioneers of modern gardening in Egypt, and persons like myself, who had the privilege of visiting her garden at Maadi before and during the war, must remember with gratitude the wonderful display flowers, creepers and shrubs in that small earthly paradise on the edge of the desert that it then was.”

Greg is referring to the First World War here, and describing Stout’s home at a time when Ma’adi was on the verge of its own spring. After its founding in 1904, Ma’adi remained largely in the background of Cairo’s noteworthy places for nearly two decades. It developed gradually, and Mary and her husband Percy Wyfold Stout, were among its earliest residents. While they first purchased land in Ma’adi in 1910, it wasn’t until the 1920s, after the Ma’adi Sporting Club was built in 1921, that the town really began to bustle.

In those in-between years, Ma’adi was known for its villas, with their large gardens -- Stout’s being among the most reputable. The same year the club was built, Stout also began more publicly making a name for herself as a gardening expert. In 1921 she co-wrote a guide for gardening in Egypt with well-known British gardener Madeline Agar, most famous for designing the War Memorial Garden in Wimbledon, UK.

Greg described that initial volume as both a guide and a despair to Cairo’s gardeners. A despair, he explained, because “so few of us have been able to to reach the lofty standard not only preached but practiced by the gifted author and experienced gardener.”

Demand for Stout’s expertise was high. The garden in Egypt already figured prominently in the expatriate experience. Articles like “In an Egyptian Garden” compared the dynamics of gardening in Egypt to those in England. The author begins by stating, “An Egyptian garden has one great advantage over an English or German one—it is beautiful the whole year round.”

The article’s author, the sister of a botanist, goes on to describe the variety of flowers that bloom in Egypt over the course of a year. In January the garden is a “blaze of poinsettias,” which give way to the “purple glory of the bougainvillia, which pours a great cascade of bloom over the western verandah, and up to the very roof of the house.” By summer, the garden “gets its crowning glory, the great white magnolia.” And in the fall, “the passion flower is in full beauty, and the starry blossoms of the climbing Jessamine shine out a pale green mist of foliage.” These kinds of landscapes were common in Ma’adi, where residents were committed to cultivating the space around their new homes.

Stout followed up her initial handbook with a larger, more detailed volume in 1935, titled Gardening for Egypt and Allied Climates. The Egyptian Horticultural Society supported the production of this expanded work, and Stout, in turn, addressed the essentials of proper gardening in Cairo.

Gardening opened with ten “do not’s” for garden planning. They include “Do not make curved paths where straight ones are of more obvious use;” “Do not make a path end without any reason;” and “Do not overplant. The effect is as unrestful as an overfurnished house.” Of her ten points, perhaps the first was most significant, “Do not forget that the house and garden belong to each other, and that the garden is mostly seen from certain fixed points within the house.” The list, she concluded, could be summed up with three words: “Utility, Proportion, Unity.” Stout continually recommends designing a garden that ties flowery aesthetics to social uses.

As intertwined places, the home and the garden provided the setting for the interactions of everyday life, and a successful garden accounted for the people who would live and play within it. Stout repeatedly emphasized the importance of designing the garden with human interactions, especially the perspective of guests, in mind. For instance, “picturesque” flowers should not be planted too close to the house because they evoked the best effect when viewed from a greater distance. Likewise, seats were to be placed “in shelter, shade and privacy, where good views of the garden can be had.” Such locations offered an intimate setting for close, personal interaction, surrounded by foliage. She also accounts for entertainment, instructing readers to design their lawns with particular games in mind, having to be watered continuously to ensure they kept their green color.

With Ma’adi’s reputation from early on as a haven for gardeners, it is not so surprising that today it is home to some of the city’s most active environmental groups—the Tree Lover’s Association, and the Environmental Rangers. These organizations pour their energy into preserving the suburb’s identity as a garden on the edge of the desert. Their efforts continue the work that Stout began nearly a century earlier. For them, the suburb’s British roots are secondary to Maadi’s significance as symbol of Egypt’s natural resources richly cultivated.