Pritam Niwas Chowk, City Palace - Jaipur

In the Pink City of Jaipur, in Northern India, four small gates are dedicated to the four seasons. In the complex of the City Palace, in a courtyard called Pritam Niwas Chowk, four beautiful brass doorways are framed by brilliant paintings and decorations that recall the endless cycle of life. Each door is decorated with natural elements typical of this climate: the Peacock Gate, with the glorious, multicoloured tails of this superb bird, is the autumn or monsoon season; the Lotus Gate celebrates summer with hundreds of pink petals and unmistakable leaves; the Rose Gate represents winter with delicate blooms, and the Green Gate introduces spring with hypnotic green waves. From the doors, geometric patterns and floral details radiate outward, up to the above chajjas, the overhanging roofs. A closer inspection reveals small Hindu idols placed over the lintels. They are the murtis, the representation or better, the true incarnation and manifestation of Divine Spirits. Strict rules, codified long times ago, establish their size, shape and materials, the rites for their sanctification, and the appropriate ceremonies of worship. According to a more scientific interpretation, these small deities are the real subjects of the courtyard, giving to each door a proper sense. Vishnu is on the Peacock Gate to northeast, Devi on the Lotus Gate to southeast, Shiva and his wife Pravati on the gate strewn with roses to southwest, and Ganesh on the Spring Gate to northwest.

From the external gates on the road, subsequent passages lead to a series of internal palaces and courtyards. Traditional principles of Indian architecture, collected in the treaties known as vastu shastric, state that a maharaja’s palace has to be developed in a series of seven enclosed, concentric courtyards, accessible by ceremonial gates. The passage has to be progressive but firm in dividing the public and official life from the innermost area dedicated to private life and women, isolated and forbidden to most people. 


The Pritam Niwas Chowk, once dedicated to royal dances with musicians and singers performing from the balconies above the doors, is the fifth courtyard. Through a corridor from the Spring Gate, maharaja accessed the zanana mahal, or women’s quarter, the sixth courtyard, and from here, the seventh and last courtyard, the zanana majlis, or the women’s audience hall.  

Still from the Pritam Niwas Chowk, selected people had access to the Chandra Mahal, the maharaja’s private residence, and, crossing the courtyard, to the Anand Mahal, the Hall of Bliss, now a museum for a collection of Indian antique arms and armours. The pyramidal structure of the Chandra Mahal, the Palace of the Moon, dominates the court with its seven storeys of decreasing size that replicate the horizontal sequence of the seven courtyards. Today, the palace is not open to the public, as it houses the descendants of the maharaja, and the luxurious interiors of each storey, identified by a poetic name, characteristic decorations and specific use, can be seen only in pictures.

Traditional principles of Indian architecture extend beyond the courtyards of the City Palace to the planning and building of the entire town. Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, who moved the capital from Amber. The design of the town expressed the Maharaja’s vision inspired by his passion for astronomy and his interest in religion and arts. With the help of an eminent architect, the town was designed following a strict, ordered geometric pattern. Every aspect, from the directions of the roads to the number of shops, referred to ancient architectural principles and to religious practice. Jaipur was divided into nine blocks, as the nine planets of the ancient zodiac, and surrounded by huge fortification walls, with seven gates. The City Palace was built in the centre if this grid, surrounded by broad streets lined with trees, shops and mansions. 

The geometrical harmony of the place, its external and internal connections, the sense of protection and privacy granted by imposing walls and gates, the refined decorations and colours could get lost in a quick visit. Do not forget it when you enter the Pritam Niwas Chowk, the Court of the Beloved.







Further reading:
Vibhuti Sachdev & Giles Tillotson, Jaipur City Palace, Roli & Janssen BV, The Netherlands, 2008.

Photos
Travelinagarden

Biodiversity - South Africa.

The group said: “Biodiversity” and the camera captured smiles and fragments of a newly planted flowerbed. In the background, there was life in a township near Cape Town, South Africa, in an ordinary day of August. The group had spent the day working at Melton Primary School, planting small shrubs and flowers, filling the gaps with cuttings, weeding, raking, refining the edge and sweeping the path.

For none of those people, biodiversity was just a word.
Some of them were part of a three-year project that involves township schools, in the windy Cape Flats, in learning about the environment and creating new gardens. Indigenous flora brings back the roots in the sandy soil enriched with handfuls of bone meal creating water-wise gardens, knowledge and awareness. Vegetable gardens often complete the program, providing food for the pupils and work for community. Each year, five new schools are selected to join the greening project taking into account, among different requisites, their interest and enthusiasm. Then, teachers and community members begin the training by studying plant cultivation, soil, and propagation. This is the first step to establish lasting, sustainable gardens, followed by the need to involve as many people as possible.

Gardening is a demanding activity, and that day, help came from a group of people who was spending two weeks in South Africa learning about biodiversity.

I was in the group with: European garden designers, landscape designers, promising landscape architects and an experienced teacher of garden design. Suitable venues for our studies were, from time to time, Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, private and public gardens, natural reserves, museums and markets, wine estates and several restaurants. There, passionate experts introduced us to a variety of subjects: from fynbos vegetation to Bushmen culture, from the works in progress in a new children playground at Green Point Park to a marshland area where modern houses are built in a labyrinth of pools, streams, and canals surrounded by indigenous flora. In exchange, we worked. Our work had different shapes and sizes. It took seconds to pollinate a solitary cycad at Kirstenbosch, while more time and energy were required to plant beds of heathers before the rain, or to prepare a proper basket with fresh vegetables grown in the Cape Flats to be delivered in town.

Every day was different, and the outline of Table Mountain was never too far.


Table Mountain is part of the Cape Floristic Kingdom in Western Cape with around 9.000 species, of which 70% are endemic. The smallest of the six floral kingdoms of the world is an excellent example of biodiversity.

Biodiversity is the variety of life forms that lives in an ecosystem, or how late winter rains turn the ground into a carpet of daisies stuffed with bulbs, or smart succulents protect their leaves from the scorching sun. Or how, in a couple of years, proud children at Melton Primary School will see their garden bloom outside the windows of their classrooms.






Links:
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens – Cape Town South Africa
http://www.sanbi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&Itemid=57&id=139

Cape Town garden volunteers - London - UK
Ms. Patricia Walby organized the group of garden volunteers in Cape Town
http://www.capetowngardenvolunteers.co.uk

Photos:
Travelinagarden.

The grotto.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.

In a spring day with no sun, I would work hard following Mr. John Serle’s instructions to transform my empty room in a grotto.

Mr. John Serle was the gardener and the invaluable help of Mr. Alexander Pope, the English poet and gardener who lived near London at the beginning of the 18th century. The success of his translation of Homer's The Iliad into English couplets allowed him to settle in a leased property in Twickenham around 1719. He built a three-storey Palladian villa overlooking the Thames and created a garden on the other side of the road, the Hampton Court - London highway. He arranged a subterranean passage to link the villa to the garden and transformed it into a fancy grotto. In his correspondence, he proudly informed his friends about developments:

Pope to Blount, June 2, 1725

“…I have put the last hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto … When you shut the doors of this grotto it becomes on the instant, from a luminous room a Camera obscura on the walls of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats are forming a moving picture in their visible radiations; …It is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of looking-glass in angular forms; and in the ceiling is a star of the same material, at which when a lamp, of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster, is hung in the middles, a thousand pointed rays glitter, and are reflected over the place.” (vol.6)

Swift to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725

“…I have been told by Mr. Ford of your great achievements in building and planting, and especially of you subterranean passage to your garden, whereby you turned a blunder into a beauty, which is a piece of Ars Poetica.” (vol.7)

Pope to Fortescue London, March 22, 1734-5

“…My garden, however, is in good condition and promises fruits not too early. I’m building a stone obelisk, making two new ovens and stoves, and a hot-house for ananas, of which I hope you will taste this year. “ (vol.9)

Pope to Swift London March 25, 1736

“…Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit-trees and kitchen-garden than you have any thought of: may, I have good melons and pineapples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, then when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, Agricultura proxima sapientiae.” (vol.7)

Pope to Sir Hans Sloane, Twickenham, March 30, 1742

“Sir, I am extremely obliged to you for your intended kindness of furnishing my grotto with that surprising natural curiosity, which indeed I have ardently sought some time.” (vol.9)

Pope to Warbourton Twitenam, March 1743

“…I have lived much by myself of late, partly through ill-health, and partly to amuse myself with little improvements in my garden and house, to which possibly I shall, if I live, be soon more confined..” (vol.9)

The melancholy tone of the last letter does not stifle his pleasure and interest in gardening. Pope was part of a group of noble patrons and artists who were creating the new landscaped garden: asymmetry, surprise and variety, clumps of trees, winding paths and unexpected panoramic views, statues, urns and inscriptions to recall the high moral values of the classical world that inspired their life and art. 

The Grotto was a place of retirement and inspiration and, in his last years, a museum for his minerals. I quote Mr. John Serle, who described the incredible collections of minerals in the only official guide to the garden published in 1745, one year after Mr. Alexander Pope’s death:

“… Several large piece of fine Crystal intermix’d with Yellow Mundic;…Silver Ore from the mines of Mexico, …petrified wood, Brazil pebbles, Egyptian pebbles and blood-stones from Mr. Brisden... Some large clumps of Amethyst and several pieces of White Spar from the Duchess of Cleveland. …Many pieces of corals…One Cornish diamond, from the Prince’s Mine in Cornwall…”

I would like to have a room, an empty room with heaps of shells, glasses, stones, ores, minerals, gems, stalactites, crystals, marbles, alabaster and amethysts scattered on the floor, and an inspired poet with a cup of tea in his hand entering the door.



Further reading:
Alexander Pope, The works of Alexander Pope : including several hundred unpublished letters and other new materials, London 1841 - different volumes from Internet Archive  http://www.archive.org

John Serle, A plan of Mr. Pope's garden: as it was left at his death, with a plan and perspective view of the grotto, Garland Publishing Inc. New York London 1982.

Photos:
Travelinagarden
except The Grotto as drawn by John Serle in 1745 (from The Twickenham Museum)

Links:
The official site of The Twickenham Museum: 

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk

The lumber room - Saki

The gooseberry garden is abruptly introduced at the beginning of this short story by the nameless aunt. Punished for having put a frog in his milk bowl during breakfast, Nicholas cannot enter into it. I imagine this square garden with the clipped gooseberry shrubs lined up along the perimeter, with round translucent green berries and small spring-green leaves that hide sharp spines. The compact rows are interrupted just in proximity of the two doors that allow the entrance into the garden. These are flanked by large ball of glossy-green buxus and framed by scented roses and clematis. Unrestrained plants grow inside the geometric area disturbing the ordered perspective. Over grown artichokes, excessive raspberry canes and other fruit bushes create a screen around this “…forbidden paradise.” They hide beds of vegetables, maybe zucchini, spinach and carrots or potatoes and tomatoes or salads, onions and abundant flowers. Buzzing bees, annoying flies and lonely butterflies are not mentioned, nor is the smell of the earth and the grass, or the drip of water in the watering can. Hector Hugh Munro, the British novelist known by the pen-name Saki, does not linger on this picture full of life, as Nicholas does not attempt to enter into the forbidden garden but twice, after the departure of his cousins and younger brother for an afternoon expedition to Jagborough cove. He has other plans. Finally, when he is sure that the aunt alarmed by his sorties is firmly settled in the garden occupied in “… trivial gardening operations”, Nicholas takes a key and enters into a place “… carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered”: the lumber-room. 

The contrast between the garden and the room is striking: outside life flows in the sunshine while the large room is dimly lighted, damp and maybe cold. But, “… it came up to his expectations.” Beautiful and useless objects, banished from the house to prevent their damaging, lie forgotten in the dust. In his imaginative mind, these wonders recall exotic unknown worlds he can create to his fancy: Indian hangings with hunting scenes, “… twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck..”, ”… little brass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins delightful to see and to handle…” A large anonymous square book “… full of coloured pictures of birds.” The gooseberry garden becomes a “…stale delight, a mere material pleasure” compared to this “…unknown land”.

His aunt’s shrieks catch his attention, and he leaves the secret room for the garden. She is calling for help: she slipped in the rain-water tank while she was looking for him, and now she is not able to get out of it. Nicholas’s revenge is firm but measured. And sweet, as he skillfully turns against her all those arguments she usually says to control and scare the children. So, he cannot fetch the ladder to help her because he is an obedient and respectful child who has been told not to enter the garden. Besides, her strange voice awakes his suspicions: is the Evil One hidden in the garden to tempt him? He promptly proves his assertion with a trick, then, satisfied, leaves the garden and the task to rescue the angry woman to a maid who is looking for parsley. 

It is easy to love this brave child who challenges the adult world to test its consistency and follow his fantasies. He does not dispute rules and punishments, but this does not prevent him to reason about the “older, wiser and better people”. He observes them concluding with “childish discernment” that they make mistakes, they are unfair and they contradict themselves. But he is a child. He lives the present. The aunt, actually his cousins’ aunt but with extended educational powers on him too, was inspired by the real author’s aunt. She exerts a tyrannical authority that reveals her hypocrisy and unfair character. She has no love and is not able to understand or communicate with these children. She banished beauty, fancy and enjoyment from their lives and with perverse pleasure restraints their education to absurd punishments and prohibitions.

The end of the day is the epilogue of the short story. They gather around the table for the tea in a cold atmosphere and “in a fearsome silence.” His aunt is still angry for the fall in the water-tank and the other children complain a disastrous expedition to the cove. Nicholas does not care. He is absorbed in the magic world he discovered behind the door, in a hunting scene with hounds, wolves and a wounded stag.

This is the only real world for a child and certainly the only impossible world for adults.

This short story is included in the collection “Beasts and Super-Beasts”, published for the first time in 1914. I am currently searching this book, I hope to find more about the gooseberry garden in the other 36 short stories.

Photos:
Travelinagarden.

"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

During the week-end, I raked dried leaves, cut dried stems of iris sibirica and pruned hydrangeas.

Facing old shrubs of hydrangea with pruning shears and saw marks the official beginning of spring. There is a first group of hydrangea macrophylla Mopheads close to the house, against a wall with primroses at their feet. The second group is in a hidden corner, exuberant hydrangeas quercifiolia with their long rusty-brown panicles intact after the freeze of winter. The third and last group of unhappy hydrangea macrophylla Lacecap is in the back of the house, in an open lawn too exposed and besieged by uncontrollable weeds to develop properly. 

I eliminated old wood and dead branches, proceeding fast and determined to behead faded blooms reducing the length of the lateral branches to the suggested number of buds. At least, for the first three or four shrubs.

Primroses and narcissus are just an idea in this north exposed area where snow lingers for long time. I spread a generous layer of manure at the base of these old shrubs in the hope of immediate abundant rains and summer gorgeous flowers. I stopped for a cup of mid-morning coffee and wasted time in the vain search for the book where I had read a romantic and improbable story about this shrub. With the name Hortense, the French plant hunter and botanist Philibert Commerson celebrated in 1771 his brave and reliable assistant Jean Baret. In Thaiti, circumstances forced Jean to reveal his true nature of young woman. When the dangerous expedition around the world finished, Jeanne changed her name in Hortense and assisted her master till his death. Then, she returned in Paris and married.

I moved to the hydrangea quercifolia after lunch. I heard someone calling me when I was deciding if two peonies needed to be transplanted a little farer from the expanding hydrangeas. My neighbour, with red summer shoes and glossy red hairs, had appeared close to the fence. She was happy to see me after the long winter months and we updated each other following a random list of names that included relative, friends and acquaintances. Then, we talked about the plants that had died during winter. A cruel fate, she remarked but, from her wise seventy years old, she affirmed that it was better their dead to our and disappeared among her clipped azaleas. The magic moment of decision was gone. I thought I needed to know more about the growth of hydrangea quercifolia and I decided to suspend any radical action in this area crammed with epimediums, peonies, anemone japonica and spring bulbs.

The third group was waiting for its moment of attention and care but it was late and I was tired. I looked at these frail shrubs knowing that they deserve energy and concentration.

I put down pruning shears and saw, rake and wheelbarrow and I took my time for the last task of the day: smelling the white lonicera fragrantissima, investigating the growth of the red buds of peonies, finding the first narcissus exactly where it was last year, counting snowdrops, cyclamens and iris ungucularis and touching the fat blooms of daphne. The sun was hidden by soft, grey clouds and it was getting cold again. But...

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”(1)

Note:
(1) Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1819 near Florence, Italy.

Photos:
Travelinagarden.

Matrioshkas.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.

In a snowy winter day, sitting on the wooden floor, I would open a case full of Russian matryoshkas wrapped in old newspapers sheets. I would open each doll again and again, until the tiniest one would be deployed. Then, looking out of the window, I would be in a world of violent snowstorms, dark forests and small houses where high stoves fill rooms and hearts with their warmth.

Vassily Zviozdochkin and Sergej Malyutin created the first Russian nested doll around 1890, in the Abramtsevo estate, seventy kilometres north of Moscow. They were inspired by a similar Japanese toy, which portrayed an old wise Buddhist man called Fukuruma. Each of the eight dolls, except the last one, could be divided into two halves revealing a smaller doll inside. Malyutin, who illustrated children’s books, painted the barrel-shaped dolls as happy and smiling peasant women, dressed with coloured headscarf and aprons while clutch a black rooster or a bowl. The smallest doll was a sleeping baby.

Raw material is seasoned wood. Lime wood, the most common, requires at least two years of ripening before the woodworker could start his job with the turning lathe, knives and chisels. Then, dolls are painted in bright, basic colours and finished with several coats of lacquer. Today, decorations are more important than thickness, which once showed the skill of the artisan and determined the beauty of the dolls. Traditional patterns developed in different styles, some focused on the face, others on the costume. The expression of the eyes or the hairstyle competed with birds, fruits, vegetables and flowers or, in recent times, with the ironic portrait of famous people. Each element was a symbol that, with elements taken from country life, recalled prosperity and happiness.

Matryoshkas enhance rural life and the traditional values of family and simplicity, with both their image of fertile, little mothers and with their name, derived from the popular female names of Matryona or Matriosha. Actually, this hymn to popular life was invented in a laboratory for the production and sale of toys. The Children’s Education Workshop was part of a wider project intended to preserve Russian folk crafts in the Abramtsevo estate. Here, artists coming from the whole country created art in everyday objects with techniques and patterns learnt from skilled artisans. Studies ranged from music and dance to furniture, or from lace to jewels. The owner was an industrialist and patron of art named Savva Mamontov. He was sincerely interested in the conservation of folk works and in the business generated by an increasing demand for objects recalling the true Russian style, especially in the area of Moscow. This emerged as a rich, lively town after a period of decline started with the forced westernization wanted by Peter the Great. In the first years of the XVIII century, he had imposed European manners and French language to Russian nobles, and rigid, classical facades to palaces built in Saint Petersburg. The town he had created on the water "…as a work of art”(1) despised Moscow for its lifestyle rooted in popular old traditions. But, this reputation allowed Moscow to become the “mother”, the symbol for Russian people of their true past with its customs and beliefs that new economy endangered with a fast railway and cheap industrial products.

Matrioshkas were a great success and were sold in millions not only in Russia. With the World Exhibition held in Paris in 1900, Russian style invaded European capitals with its exotic, cheerful and coloured allure inspired to an ideal, peaceful, rural world. An image that, in a few years, a war and a bloody revolution would destroy with their foolish violence and brutality.

Sitting on the floor, surrounded by coloured, smiling families, I would read the story of this country while the snow falls.



Notes:
(1) page 6, Orlando Figes, La danza di Natasha – Storia della cultura russa (XVIII-XX secolo), 2002 Torino, Biblioteca Einaudi



Further reading:
Orlando Figes, La danza di Natasha – Storia della cultura russa (XVIII-XX secolo), 2002 Torino, Biblioteca Einaudi

Cherry Gilchrist, Russian Magic: Living Folk traditions of an Enchanted Landscape,
From google book

Photos:
Travelinagarden