Gardens of Time

 This is a delayed posting of my July column;

April showers bring May Flowers;

Weddings in June bring Bouquet tunes.

But July is when Gardens fully bloom!

 

This year’s Met Gala, The Garden of Time, based on a short story, inspired today’s column. I’m celebrating gardens from mythology to imaginary ones to historical examples to those we can still visit today.  There are many categories of gardens. Often we think of those with myriads of colorful flowers, growing informally around our homes. Public gardens are likely to be formal, with hedges and paths and even topiary, usually found around museums and estates, both public and private.

 

Gardens are where life begins anew each year, where love can be secretly nourished and passions kindled. They can provide places to relax and meditate, places to recharge emotional batteries. We can enjoy them in solitude or with friends and family. You could have a bucket list with nothing but wonderful gardens still extant to visit.

 

Our retrospective begins with the Garden of Eden, the garden of God, from where both Adam and Eve were expelled after Eve gave Adam that apple. In Greek Mythology, The Garden of the Hesperides, aka Hera's Orchard, was the sacred garden of Hera from where the gods got their immortality. Heracles (the Roman Hercules), had to retrieve golden apples from the tree in the center of the garden as part of his twelve labors. Also in Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields are the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. Obviously, none of these gardens can be visited today.

 

Other historical gardens no longer bucket list options are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They’ve been described as marvels of agricultural engineering, filled with flowers, fruit, exotic foliage, and impressive waterfalls. Similarly, literary gardens are wish-list only, the Garden of the Finzi Contini, for instance. And you can’t spend midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Do we even know where The Secret Garden is?

 

Another summer garden is the Elizabeth Park Rose Garden, in Hartford, CT a walkers' haven, with several gardens along its wildflower trail, a lovely pond and sports and concert facilities It’s best known for its magnificent rose gardens, with 800 varieties of roses.

 

Some gardens celebrated in paintings and literature can still be visited. Monet’s Gardens in Giverny should be on your list. Mercifully, The Garden of Earthly Delights depicted by Hieronymus Bosch was imaginary. You’d be certifiable to want to visit it. On the other hand, somewhere in England and well worth searching for must be that Host of Golden Daffodils that inspired Wordsworth when he wandered lonely as a cloud.

 

By now you should be looking for good examples for your bucket list. I’ll start with one that you’ll want to visit next spring; lt's past it's prime in summer. It's the Keukenhof Tulip Gardens in The Netherlands. Pique your interest by looking at some photos on line. They’re glorious.

 

There are two fabulous botanical gardens to include, one on each side of the pond. The first are the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew Gardens in Richmond (Southwest London). It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. There are both formal and informal gardens to explore and various houses to visit, especially the Great Pagoda.

 

The second is the New York Botanical Garden, located in Bronx Park. It contains fifty different gardens and plant collections, and even a cascade waterfall. Throughout the year there are exhibitions, immersive botanical experiences, art and music. It’s well worth an extended visit.

 

For those wanting to add some formal gardens to their bucket lists, you can do no better than visiting the Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre outside Paris. The gardens of Versailles contain some 400 statues, making them the world’s largest open-air sculpture museum. Go for the palace, but allow plenty of time for the gardens.

 

For a similar experience, travel to Vienna to see the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn, an impressive and well-preserved Baroque property. The gardens form an organic extension of the palace, so plan to visit the entire complex. It, too, is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

 

A very different option would be the formal Gardens of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. It’s another UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The focus of the gardens is the white marble mausoleum, built by the emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife. Forewarned: depending on when you visit, it can be a challenge to fight the crowds.

 

We’ve barely scratched the surface of gardens worth seeing. The sooner you build your own bucket list, the sooner you can plan trips to visit them. Start looking for comfortable walking shoes now!

 

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