Tribute to Hortus Malabaricus

KOCHI: French botanist Patrick Blanc has created over 250 vertical gardens at prestigious addresses around the world, but the garden that he creates for the Kochi Muziris Biennale will be his second creation in India. The first was nearly ten years back at the French embassy in New Delhi.

Speaking at the Kochi Biennale Foundation’s ‘Let’s Talk’ event at the St Teresa’s College auditorium on Saturday, Blanc took the audience through an “enlightening” presentation of his gravity-defying gardens around the world. They are the ideal green stretches for crowded cities which cannot afford the luxury of spacious ones.

Blanc, 61, hopes that his Biennale garden installation at Fort Kochi Veli will be a permanent work that evolves into something useful over the years. Veli was chosen as the location because it was here that the study for the plant tome Hortus Malabaricus took place in the 17th century.

“For a start, I will use the plants that I find in local nurseries,” said Blanc, who uses anything from a 100 to 450 species in his gardens. “I hope we can then slowly introduce native plants, which we are able to propagate. This would be a great learning ground to the local people and to visitors to the region,” he said.  Archtect G. Shankar and former Kochi Mayor K.J. Sohan also participated in the event.