Return to Uwe’s Garden
By Margaret Sheard and Chris Elliott
On Sunday 14th April, we returned to Uwe’s garden but of 
course this is not now his garden any more as he had decided at the end of 2012 to leave the TRNC for pastures new. Adolf Kohn (the previous TFR Secretary) and his partner Nirwana now live there and they kindly agreed that the TFR picnic in the garden could still continue. Like myself, I am sure that there are still a lot of TFR member
s who will always think of it as Uwe’s garden from the many happy hours spent there in the past.
When we arrived there were many cars parked in the area below the house and garden and when we entered we were greeted by a lovely sight of tables and chairs with umbrellas and awnings plus a BBQ which had been arranged outside by Adolf and Nirwana with maybe a little help from some of the members who had arrived early.
We were so pleased to see Uwe Vandieken who has been 
travelling since he left the TRNC but had come back for a few weeks to look up all of his old friends. He looked well and happy and said while he is here he is keeping himself occupied by doing a little work in his former garden before he departs to continue with his new life.
The Foreign Residents in the TRNC has 164 members from 15 different countries so at the picnic there was an assortment of nationalities and we found ourselves a space 
on a table where we were German, English and American. Everyone was soon tucking into their food, some cooked on the BBQ with extra bits and pieces from the table where people had contributed salads and other meze type goodies to share.
It was a lovely sunny day and everyone was having a good time 
catching up with friends and acquaintances and enjoying the picnic in the sunshine. We took the opportunity of wandering around the garden and it looked fantastic, some of Uwe’s sculptures have gone to new homes but overall the garden is just as I remember it from last year. Once again I suspect there were parts of the garden we missed as it is so vast but ambling around the paths and up and down steps to the d
ifferent levels we probably covered a good part of it and it was a delight to see many of the plants blooming at this spring-like time of the year.
Chris has discovered the joys of video with his camera and is getting very adept at it so we are including below two really nice videos of the picnic and parts of the garden for everyone to enjoy.
After a few hours people were starting to pack up ready to make their way home so we said our farewells to the people we knew and the new acquaintances we had made and said goodbye with special thanks to Adolf and Nirwana for their generous hospitality and for allowing us to once again visit and enjoy “Uwe’s Garden”.
To see the previous article and slideshow of the picnic we went to in 2012 click here
.
