Native planting

In the words of the project, vegetation and outdoor spaces are not accessory elements but protagonists of the design: tapestries of native planting soften the austerity of the materials along the terraces, around the pool and across the planted roofs.

Native, here, means the planting of the island’s own slopes: aromatic, silver-leaved and sun-hardy. Olive trees and slim cypresses give shade and height; below them, lavender, rosemary, thyme and Greek sage, myrtle — the island’s mersinia — and basil by the terraces: the plants that scent the hillsides of Cyprus.

Aromatic plants answer when you brush past them: their scent is strongest when a hand or a towel bruises the leaves. That is why they belong where life happens — beside paths, seats and pools — and why, on a warm evening, a Mediterranean terrace smells of resin and herbs.

Across the Greek world, a pot of basil on the sill or by the terrace door has long been the old way of keeping mosquitoes away. Here basil, lavender and rosemary are planned where you sit — beside the terraces, the doors and the pool — carrying on that habit.

They ask little in return. Once established, the plants of the island’s slopes see out the long dry summer on little water and stay green through the winter; and in spring, when the wild lavender flowers across the hillsides, and through the summer, when the thyme follows, they bring the bees.