Plants Connect Where You Are To Where You Wish You Were

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I got my start in horticultural travel writing in 1992. I was in Geneva, Switzerland, visiting the Geneva Botanical Gardens. The collection was amazing. Looking back at my pictures 28 years later, I consider carefully what I photographed.

The Geneva Botanical Gardens combined exhibits that mimic wild, native growth patterns with heavily manicured exhibits. Of course, none of the natural exhibits were really wild. They were carefully planned and maintained. They balanced restraint and the plants’ growth habits.

A dry stack rock wall outside the conservatory provided a stage for vertical plantings. A variety of ferns jutted out of the crevices. There was a sense of motion in the way the plants spilled out from their nooks and crannies. They seemed to be in the process of traveling, or escaping, or taking over the world.

Nearby, as though for contrast, a multicolored bed of pansies was surrounded by a concrete curb. The bed was surrounded by gravel walkways. It showcased every color of bloom imaginable.

Farther along on the tour, a rock outcropping provided a dropping point for a waterfall. More plants clung to the rocky niches above the falls. Exhibits included animal enclosures. A toucan perched above an arrangement of shrubs. A white parrot rested under a broad leafed tree. Turtles swam under an assortment of sedges.

A path guided the visitors around a bed of irises. The plot displayed an exhaustive collection of iris varieties. Each species was cataloged with a name plate. The iris, the state flower of Tennessee, is tended as proudly in the Geneva Botanical Gardens as it is in Nashville. The plants of a culture connect the visitor to the host in a permanent way. They bring familiarity to the new place. The simple, daisy-like bloom of Erigeron that graces a patch of soil in Switzerland is a cousin of the roadside asters in America. After the trip is over and the bags are unpacked, the journey continues with the plants.

The ferns and sedges that grow in rural Alabama are the botanical kinfolk of the plants in the Geneva Gardens, and they connect memories of 1992 with realities of 2020. They connect the freedom of youth with the responsibilities of middle age, and they give deeper meaning to both. The unencumbered exploration of gardens was a privilege. That exploration became fuel to sustain a middle aged gardener.