The green of Rio de Janeiro

Flower & Garden Magazine, Feb, 2002 by Lyn Dobrin

For just a few minutes, when conjuring an image of Rio de Janeiro, forget the beaches. Don't think about string bikinis or the girl from Ipanema. Think green. Rio de Janeiro is a garden destination of the top order, a city resplendent with botanical gardens, rhythmic tropical landscapes and a huge forest within the city limits. I was atop famed Sugar Loaf Mountain, and spread before me was a striking jigsaw puzzle with curlicues of blue coves curving into white beaches that recede into clusters of little cities of mostly white buildings. Towering granite hills punctuate and define these communities, and the deep blue heart of Rio--the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon--gives way to the vast green expanse of the Tijuca Forest. Later, it was humbling to drive through the forest and see all my houseplants growing with wild exuberance--16-foot-high corn plants and acres of begonias in bloom along the roadside. This is not an old growth forest. The land had been cleared as a coffee plantation, but in 1862, the city began its reforestation program.

Tijuca National Park is nearly 8,000 acres, with a 37-mile perimeter, and packed with eucalyptus, jacaranda, manaca raintrees and jakfruit trees. Jeep trips are available to take you deeper into the forest if you so desire.

Located toward the center of town in the Jardim Botanico District are Rio's Botanical Gardens and Parque Lage. You don't have to see them to know they are near--the rich, loamy aroma of earth and jungle grabs hold immediately. I loved the wildness of Parque Lage; now the site of a school for the visual arts. The school is housed in a turn-of-the-century mansion built by a businessman for his wife who sang opera for family and friends. "It's our Taj Mahal," said Ivete Miloski, assistant to the school's director.

If ever there was an inspiring spot for an artist, this is it. The stone house, which has the patina of a much older place, like a Roman ruin, opens into a courtyard where students paint. Behind and above them stretches the oldest part of Tijuca Forest and the sheer face of Corcovado, where the famous statue of Christ towers above.

We then went down the road to the Botanical Garden. Early in the nineteenth century, fearful of losing his crown and the head underneath it, Portugal's Prince Regent, Don Joao VI, and his family fled to Rio to escape Bonaparte's army. Shortly after his arrival, Prince Joao (who eventually returned to Portugal to be crowned king of the United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil) became enchanted with a sugar cane estate. He decided to turn it into a garden for the cultivation and acclimatization of economically useful plants from the Portuguese East Indies.

So began what is today the Jardim Botanico, an imposing garden that beautifully shows off the flora of the region and of Amazonia. The cathedral-like avenue of Royal Palms defines Jardim Botanico--two hundred feet high and cutting diagonally across the entire garden. All these are derived from a single palm planted there in 1809, explained Olga Souza, director of the garden's botanical center. This original palm, subsequently destroyed by lightning, was called palma mater, thought to be the mother of all royal palms in Brazil. "Slaves used to come at night and take the seeds to sell," said Souza. Of special interest are the bromeliads that grow on trunks and along branches of big trees. The astounding Cannonball Tree (Couroupita guianensis) is aptly named for the clusters of cannonball-like fruit that cling to the trunk and branches.

The deepest pleasure of the Rio visit was seeing the work of garden architect Roberto Burle Marx. This landscaping genius, who died in 1994 at age 85, is described by garden writer Sima Eliovson as having "the greatest single influence on gardens since the development of the English garden tradition in the 18th century."

In 1965, the American Institute of Architects in Washington designated him "the real creator of the modern garden," and The Kentucky Botanic Gardens in 1985 proclaimed him "the world's greatest living landscape architect; his gardens famous for their rhythm, texture and imagination."

What Roberto Burle Marx did was to liberate tropical garden design from the stifling formality of European gardens. Out with the carnations, roses and gladioli; in with the bromeliads, orchids and native grasses. Although he grew up in Brazil, Burle Marx's appreciation of his country's flora developed while he was studying in Germany. The 19-year-old student's epiphany occurred when he visited the Brazilian plant section of the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Gardens. For the first time he understood the beauty and power of his native Brazilian plant life. When he returned to Rio two years later, he began transforming his home into a tropical plant center, collecting common and rare plants of the area. His 100-acre homestead, Sitio Burle Marx, just outside the city environs, is now a trust of the Brazilian government and is a treasure trove of rare and typical tropical flora--a collection of more than 3,500 species of plants that are grouped in several distinct gardens on the hillside.