Back in the Garden
Yesterday we had docent training class at the botanical garden, long gaseous lectures on the desert conservatory, which is very interesting, and the Japanese garden, which, basically, is not.
The most interesting thing about it, how to grow Japanese plants in alkaline sandy desert soil with wild temp variations cold winter, hot summer, hot days, cold nights and oh yes, no humidity, no humus and no water, is the least well described.
We got a tour from the most enthusiastic docent, who apparently provided the worthless manual texts -- all printouts of online info about Japanese culture, emphasizing the "nature" aspects of Japanese garden versus the man-made formal aspects of Western gardening, which is really, really wrong-headed. There's nothing natural about Japanese gardens. They are Shinto/Buddho/Zen/samurai/fascist constructs. I did not say this. But she blathered over and over again about how the Japanese designer wanted to make sure we docents purveyed authentic information, ie., his own control freak version of Japanese culture (he says: yin and yang are Korean constructs and not Japanese, my ass, aren't the Koreans the people you buried alive? No, that was the Chinese. The Koreans are the people you made sex slaves) once he'd heard her shooting her mouth off about how the koi bring good luck.
The cool curator described, diplomatically, the struggle to get Mr. Zen Samurai Fascogardener to sub plants that would actually live in the desert for the loam-loving, humid, temperate zone, shade-loving plants which he insisted were part of the Japanese ethos (male and female, you comprehend, not yin and yang) and needed to be in the DESERT garden. They don't have bottomless pockets to tear out and replace, say, a camellia or a Japanese maple every 30 days.
The curator added that the tea ceremony house and garden, which are to be constructed next, are the subject of casual but loaded questions by seemingly-innocent tourists. Albuquerque is, it seems, a hotbed of homicidal tea ceremony sects, each of which is hell-bent on getting its version of architecture and ceremony built in the public space. We are to answer that we're working with our Japanese consultants to make something respectful and serene that works in the space.
Interesting.
I am more and more driven in this case to my scraggly little library on fascist aesthetics, not least![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
highfemme's extraordinary essay on Po-Co Afro Pomo Homo imperialism through botanical gardens.
Watch this space.
The most interesting thing about it, how to grow Japanese plants in alkaline sandy desert soil with wild temp variations cold winter, hot summer, hot days, cold nights and oh yes, no humidity, no humus and no water, is the least well described.
We got a tour from the most enthusiastic docent, who apparently provided the worthless manual texts -- all printouts of online info about Japanese culture, emphasizing the "nature" aspects of Japanese garden versus the man-made formal aspects of Western gardening, which is really, really wrong-headed. There's nothing natural about Japanese gardens. They are Shinto/Buddho/Zen/samurai/fascist constructs. I did not say this. But she blathered over and over again about how the Japanese designer wanted to make sure we docents purveyed authentic information, ie., his own control freak version of Japanese culture (he says: yin and yang are Korean constructs and not Japanese, my ass, aren't the Koreans the people you buried alive? No, that was the Chinese. The Koreans are the people you made sex slaves) once he'd heard her shooting her mouth off about how the koi bring good luck.
The cool curator described, diplomatically, the struggle to get Mr. Zen Samurai Fascogardener to sub plants that would actually live in the desert for the loam-loving, humid, temperate zone, shade-loving plants which he insisted were part of the Japanese ethos (male and female, you comprehend, not yin and yang) and needed to be in the DESERT garden. They don't have bottomless pockets to tear out and replace, say, a camellia or a Japanese maple every 30 days.
The curator added that the tea ceremony house and garden, which are to be constructed next, are the subject of casual but loaded questions by seemingly-innocent tourists. Albuquerque is, it seems, a hotbed of homicidal tea ceremony sects, each of which is hell-bent on getting its version of architecture and ceremony built in the public space. We are to answer that we're working with our Japanese consultants to make something respectful and serene that works in the space.
Interesting.
I am more and more driven in this case to my scraggly little library on fascist aesthetics, not least
highfemme's extraordinary essay on Po-Co Afro Pomo Homo imperialism through botanical gardens.Watch this space.