Chandra Kumari

A Sri Lankan home garden is not a hobby. Chandra's is two-thirds of an acre behind the house at Kosgoda and it does four jobs at once: coconut, cinnamon, a stand of tea on the slope, and a bank of grey clay where the land drops to the river.

Coir is the husk of the coconut, soaked in a tank for three months until the fibre lets go of the pith, then beaten, combed and twisted. It is the only natural fibre that is stronger wet than dry, which is why the island has made rope and mats out of it for as long as there have been boats. Cinnamon is the inner bark of a coppiced shrub, peeled with a curved brass knife and rolled into quills that dry into each other overnight — true Ceylon cinnamon, thin and layered and pale, not the single thick curl of cassia.

She fires the clay in a wood kiln at the bottom of the garden, twice a month, and loses about one pot in nine. She has never been able to predict which one.