Tucson Lifestyle Home and Garden • August 2019 • From TBG to D.C.

The cultural roots of the Old Pueblo are on view in our nation’s capital, thanks to an exhibit from the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

A slice of Tucson is on display in Washington, D.C., where a major botanical exhibit includes a barrio garden from the Old Pueblo.

The Tucson Botanical Gardens had Landscape Designer Maria Voris create a smaller version of its “Nuestra Jardin” (“our garden” in Spanish). Elements were shipped to the U.S. Botanic Garden and assembled as one of 20 specially selected representations for its “Gardens Across America” installation. Built in conjunction with the June meeting of the American Public Gardens Association in the U.S. capital, it will run as a public exhibit until Oct. 1.

Tucson’s contribution to the national exhibit — it is one of only four from Western states — reflects the culture of Mexican Americans and the importance of their distinctive gardens in the lives of their families.

Michelle Conklin, executive director of the Tucson Botanical Gardens, says it was an easy decision to submit the cultural landscape design to the national call for garden exhibits.

“We would be remiss if we didn’t include a barrio garden,” says Conklin. “It’s more about the people than the plants.”

Visitors often think of botanical gardens as displays of plants that are locally grown. But Conklin believes these plant collections should show other aspects of an area, too. “Visit a botanical garden and in one snapshot you can quickly experience a sense of place, the soul and spirit of a region.”

In the late 1990s, TBG staff and Latino volunteer gardeners visited residents in places like Barrio Hollywood, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Tucson. They wanted to get Nuestra Jardin right, but soon discovered that Mexican American gardens don’t follow an established style. Instead, they evolved from an oral tradition of using plants in many ways, finding space to practice Catholic rituals, and hold family celebrations. The study group combined residents’ tales with their own tour notes to develop the TBG exhibit.

“Nuestra Jardin,” built in 1999 and refreshed in 2012, replicates the whimsical, homey look that the study group recorded. It starts with the gated entrance where visitors can hear water circulating through the three-tiered hacienda-style water fountain and smell the sweet rose bush, its flowers used as a fever reducer.

The well-grown garden is a riot of plants growing not only for their beauty and scent, but for medicinal and culinary uses. Amaryllis and gladiola share beds with lettuce, peppermint, cilantro and parsley. Aloe and an orange tree have space, as do chard, white sapote and jasmine.

Mexican American gardeners are known as master recyclers. In the exhibit, flowering plants find homes in a rusty mail box, a plastic tote bag, a red wagon and a rusty olive oil can. Bedsprings hold pots of spider plants. These supplement other plantings in colorful Talavera pots and animal-shaped terra cotta planters.

The exhibit also mirrors the evolution of landscape plants in the Sonoran Desert. A large Chinaberry tree — a species originally from Asia — shades native cacti, palms from tropical Mexico, figs and pomegranate brought from Spain and nursery plants from California.

Barrio backyards serve as gathering places as well as gardening spaces. Mid- 20th century metal motel chairs in primary red and green beckon visitors to relax in a nook. Royal blue and forest green pillar candles line a rock-covered walkway to a stone bench. The brick patio sports more motel chairs.

Catholic icons have honored spots in a barrio garden and often become the center of religious practices by the family.

Typical is the shrine in Nuestra Jardin. An adobe-block half dome protects an image of the Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. Staff and volunteers often leave remembrances, or ofrendas, of departed loved ones at the shrine. It’s decorated with marigolds during Día de los Muertos, a fall holiday, and with poinsettias in the winter, including the Dec. 12 feast day of the saint.

Nuestra Jardin also has a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, a gift from a TBG fan. It illustrates the importance given to gifts of religious icons, usually of saints favored by the recipient. A chimenea holds another statue of a saint.

Toys, ornaments, birdcages, keys and small statuary are found hung on trees and set among plants in the exhibit.

This practice helps remind the Mexican American family of good as well as poignant times.

The exhibit is ever-changing because of what TBG encourages visitors to do — leave a remembrance of their own. Visitors can color a wooden heart or other material to hang on the loquat tree or various bushes. During Día de los Muertos, visitors can leave their own ofrendas at the shrine.

Maria Voris, whose cultural heritage is from Mexico, grew up playing in these types of gardens at her aunts’ homes. It was something familiar, but not particularly special at the time.

“I was not raised, really, culturally that way,” says Voris, who is the landscape designer with McGann & Associates. “When I was initially working on this project I went to one of my aunts’ houses and realized she had a typical barrio garden.”

She used Nuestra Jardin as the template for her own design that has been realized in Washington. It includes the metal chairs, a shrine and a memory tree.

Annuals and succulents grow from a tire, a saguaro boot and various tin pots. A wheelbarrow is full of herbs, while a vine winds around a bedspring frame. Blue bottles help define a bed of nopal and chiltepin. Roses, purple heart and fruit trees simulate in a smaller space the feel of a barrio garden.

Tucson Botanical Gardens raised funds from donors for the Washington, D.C., exhibit. Civano Nursery and Mesquite Valley Growers Nursery donated plant stock.

“It’s our hope, once people experience TBG’s D.C. barrio garden, they’re inspired to travel to Tucson.”

Tucson Botanical Gardens was one of 20 gardens selected to create and install a representative sample landscape at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. The exhibition, “Gardens Across America,” is running through October 2019.

TBG chose to celebrate Tucson’s traditional Mexican- American heritage by re-creating their beloved barrio garden, Nuestro Jardin. Local Landscape Designer Maria Voris was chosen to create the conceptual drawing and act as the project’s manager. Staff members from TBG assembled the final garden at the U.S. Botanic Garden site.

Guests enter through a doorway reminiscent of those in a historic barrio neighborhood. Adobe walls, painted bright cobalt blue, augment the perimeter with additional sections of ocotillo fencing and corrugated metal.

Voris’s design includes a used brick path, a loquat tree decorated with mementos, raised flowerbeds, chile ristras, colorful metal chairs, Talavera and terra cotta pottery. The display is planted with an assortment of succulents, colorful annuals and other plants typically seen in Tucson.