Thinking about gardens

Kathleen Hollowell Blog 1

Last week we went to Bogarden.  It was an interesting look at urban gardening, but it made me remember my trips outside of the country.  My first trip out of the country was to Peru in the Amazon forest.  No garden could ever compare to these.  I would wake up and have fresh fruit juice squeezed from the trees outside my living quarters.  I wouldn’t even call them gardens because they were integrated into the forest and the locals just lived off of them.  It was so great.  Unlike Bogarden that had a barrier and was in specific plots, these people barely cared for the trees and let them grow wild.  The second thing I thought of was the gardens in Grenada’s fortress.  The king built them for the queen because she was bored.  These gardens have sections of just for show and others that are meant to grow food.  Grandiose fountains and labyrinths of 4-meter high bushes hide the areas for food growth.  They seem to be hidden from the queen to make her not even think about work.  Unlike the Bogarden that is public to allow access to people that need it.  The idea of a garden can span into different mindsets.  The queen’s garden was useless except for a 10% that grew food and in the Amazon the garden was the forest, a wild untamed bounty of food.  I prefer the Amazonian garden, but I think little Bogarden was prettier than the labyrinth the queen had.