The Garden at Dusk

If I could keep a single hour of the day, it would be the one that starts around ten past five. The light goes soft and yellow, the heat finally loosens its grip, and the garden begins to change shift.

The day crew is the lizards, the bees and a single, very determined hummingbird that visits the red ginger like it has a standing appointment. The night crew arrives in no particular order. First the frogs, one voice and then a hundred. Then the insects, a sort of electric hum that thickens as the sky darkens. Then, if you're patient and sitting still, the smaller visitors that come to the lanterns.

Walking it

Start at the Almendro cottage, where the path begins, and go slowly. We lay the paths in crushed shell so you can hear anyone coming and so the water drains in the rain. The ferns lean in at about knee height, then shoulder height, then over your head by the time you reach the lower garden.

You'll notice the smell before anything else. Basil and lemongrass grow in the kitchen beds and release their oils at dusk, when the leaves are cooling. Under that sits wet earth, and under that the faint sweetness of the night-blooming flowers we planted along the Ceiba path for exactly this reason. Walk through at seven and the whole place smells like somebody has just made tea.

The lanterns

We light about forty lanterns by hand every evening. It takes Ignacio Alvaro, our gardener, about twenty-five minutes, and he does it in the same order every night, from the veranda outward. I used to think this was a small ritual. I now think it's the centre of the property. You see the lights come on one by one and understand that the place has a rhythm and a caretaker and that you are, for a week, part of it.

What to do with the hour

Honestly, not much. Bring a drink. We'll pour you something cold made with whatever fruit has been bullied by the trees that week. Sit on the low stone wall by the lower garden, where the view opens to the dark line of the sea and, on clear nights, a first star above it.

Don't bring your phone. Or bring it, and watch how quickly it stops being interesting. Last month a guest told me she had spent the entire hour counting fireflies and gave up around forty because they kept rearranging themselves. That seemed exactly right.

A small rule

We ask guests to keep voices low after dusk, partly for each other and partly for the garden. A quiet hour doesn't feel like a rule once you've sat in it. It feels like something you didn't know you were allowed to have.

If the evening has you in the mood for cooking, what we plant and why tells the story of the beds you just walked through.