Boboli Gardens, Florence

At some point in my favourite book, A Year in the World by my beloved Frances Mayes, I realised that Europe was indeed full of beautiful gardens. If you read Frances Mayes, she describes her love most eloquently for some of the most beautiful and maybe not so famous gardens in Europe. Many formal gardens like Versailles near Paris and the Medici in Florence, and many lush informal ones like the Generalife in Alhambra and the Boboli in Florence. I decided to follow in her footsteps and attempt to spend more time in gardens abroad on my travels. That’s what I do now. It somehow connects me and brings me closer to a land and its people. While I like to walk around clicking a million photos of unknown plants and trees, filling my heart’s obsession for the botanical, I do like to just sit and feel the atmosphere, the vibe.

Marie Antoinette’s Little Hamlet in Versailles

At home, I gaze in wonder at trees at the famed Empress Botanical Garden, Pune and imagine it in its heyday. It’s all rundown now, but the trees are still magnificent.

I never made it to the Boboli or the Bois de Boulogne, but the Place des Vosges, the Jardin des Tuileries and other little parks in Paris are all favourites. Parc Güell in Barcelona is like a gingerbread house wonderland with mosaic art, crawling with tourists and street vendors selling keychains and trinkets.

I am currently in love with the Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg where a large portion of Do Re Mi was shot, and several large trees in Innsbruck city centre, the Hofgarten. Vienna has its rose gardens.

I stand in awe of the Occident s fascination with the Orient. Much was gleaned from our very own famed Mughal gardens that are older than most formal gardens in Europe. Versailles is of course the most extravagant and beautiful of them all, but my favourite corner there was Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine or ‘her little hamlet’, a corner of wild and free ranging plants.

This also led to several happy visits in Leuven, Belgium’s famed historical garden. We have family there and going to the Botanical Garden is a popular thing to do. I fell in love with the beautiful fountain, so old and gurgling with life.

I always considered the Netherlands one big tulip garden with canals, which it is and it isn’t. But I learned so much about Dutch botanical imperialism via Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, The Splendour of All Things.

My last trip to Amsterdam led me to the Hortus Botanicus, well worth the very expensive entry fee and prior booking. I spent an entire day wandering around this lovely old gem of a garden. While every part of it is meticulously exotic and research oriented, I fell in love with the the original offices, covered in beautiful wisteria. The purple blossoms cascade down like a waterfall, lending so much colour to very cold spring days.

Their collection of exotic palms and tropical plants are so familiar but oh so special here. Housed in an old brick building, filled with skylights and portholes and room above for them to reach towards the sun, this was my favourite place.

You can read about its history here

Home

The Hortus Botanicus has several sections, and walk throughs. Once I walked through the entire gardens and admired the different hothouses especially the cactii, I retired under the wisteria and thought of the Desperate Housewives of Wisteria Lane. I felt like one too, broken hearted and melancholic and craving murder, a drink and romance. But flowers healed me, they always do.

Going to Europe in spring was balm for my soul. The constant message of rebirth, of coming out of a deep winter and budding, indeed, blooming again was life, nature’s way: cyclical, inevitable. It gave me hope. I just had to winter and live through the darkness and my life would find Spring, somehow, somewhere to bud again. Given the right nurturing, l might possibly blossom into something beautiful. But for now, I had to find solace in the cycle and live through the despair and the pain that comes with cruel Winter.

I also learned to live in the moment, because Lord knew when a panic attack might seize me from behind. I learned to look at beauty, ugliness and life in their entirety, not parts of a whole…. meaning, stop spiralling and overthinking. Just enjoy what is. Love and live in the now. It’s this sunset, here and now, not the one three years ago when I was with the man I love. It’s not the same tram we took together on our trip, but today’s tram, filled with quirky, new faces to watch. It was a long winter but by the time I returned, I had grown a few roots further and started to bud a little. At least I wasn’t cracking, hollow and brittle.

Built over the centuries, the Hortus Botanicus is quite marvellous, and deserves several visits. I found myself most drawn to the beauty of the brick and glass solarium for the exotic potted palms and more. These were so familiar, but here I saw them in their glory, magnificent and old and towering above me, reaching for the sun.

I picnicked there and found myself soaking in the spring sunshine and all the chlorophyll I could garner. I felt invigorated and soothed. The green called to me. The silence and the shade comforted me. Watching a child spend his afternoon with his mother soothed me. This is life, the plants seemed to echo. You live, you die, you are reborn. What will you do this life? Shed the detritus and shed the faded withered vines. Grow new ones and reach for the sun.

There is a most delightful butterfly cabin. You feel like a little girl in an Enid Blyton novel waiting for pixies to peep put and dance with the fluttering butterflies, and feast on flowers and bowls of nectar.

There are loads of school children who come on excursions, all very little. The Dutch take their gardening seriously and I think it is now firmly in their genes- a love for nature and flowers and pretty pots on every balcony in the city. Perhaps it’s how they claim their share of sunshine in an otherwise dreary, cold country with long months of autumn and winter and howling wind.

The gift shop was filled with wonders and I had a hard time choosing just one thing. I finally settled on a lovely botanical print jigsaw puzzle and a few postcards. Beware, it is filled with pretty things for people who love plants!!

I wish my local botanical garden was half as loved and cared for. But that is the way here. We are rootless and wild and have to adapt and survive without care and nurturing.

PS: Thank you to my daughter for all her tech help!