A visit to Sitio, Roberto Burle Marx’s private garden for his collection of over 3000 plants
It doesn’t make today’s headlines but right now in 2019 plant hunters are exploring the world trying to find new, useful, and unique plants. It is essential work that has continued for centuries. During the last century, Burle Marx was a plant hunter. Since childhood when his aunt gave him a plant as a gift, he had been fascinated by plants. He was a conservationist and a man in love with plants. When he went to Berlin in 1927 to study painting, he kept going to visit the botanic garden there. What surprised him most was the exotic collection of plants featured in the Berlin Botanic were the tropical plants of Brazil. Yet in Brazil, the gardens were imitating the European style, importing plants from Europe to create gardens in Brazil. He had what I would call an epiphany that Brazilian gardens would be beautiful when made with their own tropical plants. Upon his return to Brazil, this became his mission.