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SPECIAL REPORT
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MALLORCA'S
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READ’S HOTEL & SPA
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CREATING A GRAND ENGLISH GARDEN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
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BY REGINA W. BRYAN |
Take a 500-year-old stone farmhouse, one man's whimsy, years of renovations, and an idyllic Mediterranean island setting, and you've got Read's Hotel and Spa. A family-run boutique hotel with just twenty-three rooms, Read's stands out because of its distinctly English-styled sprawling lawns and gardens. Over the past 20 years, the Mallorcan property has undergone an unconventional transformation from a dilapidated pile of stones to a lush five-star oasis. |
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A MAN WITHOUT A PLAN Most people who go into the hotel business know something about hotels, or at the very least, have stayed in a wide variety of hotels. Not Vivian Read. At most, he had stayed in five hotels during his life.
"I knew nothing about running a hotel," Read said candidly. "I probably spent twice as much money building the hotel because of all the mistakes I made," he said with a shrug.
The story of Read's Hotel and Spa began in 1988 when the former London solicitor came across the C'an Moragues Estate while on holiday on Mallorca. The ancient farmhouse was for sale but it was a mess, the home to bats, barn owls and other creatures, plus tons of leftover junk and the scraggly remnants of olive and almond orchards.
Despite his lack of experience with hotels, Read had to make money from the estate for his family's move to the island to be feasible. Unconventionally, Read designed, landscaped, and decorated the entire hotel himself.
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MALLORCAN MISCALCULATIONS Read estimated that it would take two years to get C'an Moragues ready to open for business and budgeted a reasonable amount of his savings to complete the project. However, it took no less than seven years to renovate the hotel, using all of his savings and then some. One of the main factors that slowed down the renovation work was ‘island time'. Compared to London's high speed, Mallorca moves at a snail's pace, which is both good news and bad news. Things just take longer in Spain, and this is especially true when you are remodelling an ancient masia on your own and with little experience.
The Read's renovation was also expensive because of the decision to not use professionals. Read hired a few men to help him with the construction and planned the whole project himself. This decision led to many costly mistakes. Of these miscalculations the worst was the parking lot. Originally, the parking for the hotel was built directly in front of the main house so that guests would not have to walk far. All through its construction Read fretted over it. After the ground was cleared, the pavement laid, and the lines for parking spots were being painted, Mr. Read told his team to tear the whole thing out.
"I didn't want guests to look out the hotel windows onto a car park," explained Vivian. The lot has now been moved away from the hotel behind some trees, which is undoubtedly a much better location.
FROM BARREN TO BEAUTIFUL Like everything else at the hotel, Read designed the hotel's 20,000 square-metre gardens by going with his gut. "I'd go to the nursery and buy plants that I found attractive, that was all there was to it," said Read matter-of-factly. Incredibly, his method has worked and his garden not only lives but thrives, watered by a constant drip system and cared for by two full-time local professional gardeners.
The grounds, too, were a barren disaster when Vivian bought them. Creating a verdant garden in the land around Read's was almost as difficult as the renovation of the house itself. In 1994 Vivian began landscaping, hauling out the area's red clay soil and removing an endless sea of weeds, junk and rocks. New soil was brought in and the land was then rota-tilled, flattened and planted with grass seed. At the same time, many of the estate's old olive trees were moved to better locations (olive trees are easy to transplant) and Vivian bought and planted a large variety of palms.
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THIRSTY GRASS ON A DRY ISLAND Grass and lawns are not common on Mallorca because of a lack of water on the island. Read's Hotel, however, has expansive lawns with soft, water-needy grass. The lawns encircle the pool and create a green carpet leading up to the house. Keeping a lawn here is costly, and Read's lush grass would be impossible to maintain if not for the fact that the hotel sits on its own free water supply: an underground river.
The property has three wells and its own pump house as well as water treatment facilities which produce the water used in the hotel. The water from the hotel is then recycled and used to water the lawns, gardens and vineyards. If the wells one day run dry, Read's will have a serious problem, but for the moment they are sitting pretty in a sea of emerald green. The rest of the flora found on the Read's grounds demands less water and is native to Mallorca. Elegant palms stand on guard beside the pool, producing shade. Almond trees left over from archaic groves are mixed amongst cypress, cactus, laurel and oleanders. The abundant gardens attract birds and butterflies, and the guests hear the sounds of the countryside both day and night.
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SAVVY VINES AND TASTY WINES Hesitant to put in more grass on the property, Read decided to cultivate grape vines, which flourish in the terrible soil conditions and don't need much water. Read's employs two viticulture specialists who prune, harvest and maintain the hotel's small vineyard. The estate produces 600 bottles of wine at present and should soon be up to 1,000 bottles a year. The house wine is served in their Michelin-starred restaurant, Bacchus, and is available for guests to purchase.
"When guests ask where our wine comes from, it's fun telling them, ‘Right here!'. They like the novelty," explained the manager, Marcus Read. The hotel also plans to put in an herb garden to be used by the restaurant.
Read's has come a long way since Vivian Read first laid eyes on it in 1988. The hotel is proof that with the right amount of vision, time, perseverance (and water), a broken-down farmhouse and a dusty plot of land can be transformed into flourishing Island bliss.
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DETAILS:
READ’S HOTEL & SPA
SANTA MARIA MALLORCA BALEARIC ISLANDS SPAIN
OWNER: VIVIAN READ
MANAGER: MARCUS READ
CONTACT: +34 971 14 02 61
WWW.READSHOTEL.COM
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