Sir Arthur Evans was perhaps the most famous classical archaeologist of the 20th century. Almost single-handed, he established that the Minoan civilization of Crete was not an invention of later legend but actually existed - indeed flourished - in the second millennium BC. His most famous discovery was the palace of King Minos at Knossos.
In the heady early days of archaeology, the wealthy Evans was able to buy the entire site before excavating it. On the edge of it, in 1906, he built the Villa Ariadne to use as his home and headquarters and aroudn it he created a large Mediterranean with palm trees (Phoenix canariensis and
P. dactylifera).

The villa and its gardens were given by Evans to the British School of Archaeology and eventually by the School to the Greek State.
In the 1990s a collaboration between the British School and architect Flavio Zamon began to restore both villa and gardens, with the work being completed in about 2002.
Then disaster struck.
In the run-up to the Athens Olympics in 2004 the Greek government imported thousands of foreign palm trees in order to 'beautify' the coast near Heraklion.
With these trees came a small beetle with a big name (Rhynchophorous ferrugineus) which can destroy palms almost as quickly as napalm.
Zanon and his team are trying to gear up the creaking machinery of Greek bureaucracy into providing the necessary resources to counter the beetle (not helped by discovering that the garden was not even listed). It must be hoped that they are successful or this famous Cretan landmark will
suffer grievously.

(May 2009)