My favorite moment of our one short week trip in Rio de Janeiro, would be time we visiting gardens or the designed landscape relating to the famous buildings. In all, Rio is so different with Columbus, including culture, foods, people, language, buildings, etc; and also without doubt, the plants, trees, flowers in nature, which grow in South America. Architects and Landscape architects have taken the advantage of characteristics of their local environment, and their designed landscape look so distinguishing with those I used to be familiar with. My first experience of the Brazilian garden, is the sitio of Roberto Burle Marx. Things are all new to me there; so many trees and plants I have never seen, and only if you are really in there, you can understand its scale; all the trees and flowers are in large scale! even the mosquito btw: ) I really enjoy the time spending in the sitio; all the things look green, but not the same green actually. The plants had been selected carefully, and they always being placed in a pattern of depth of color; in the middle is a large tree with dark green leaves and surrounded by other smaller lighter green plants, or in the opposite order; and layer by layer the change slowly going on; giving people a feeling of dynamic change even only in the color of green.
I have the same feeling when we visited the botanical garden, and the small garden in front of the Ministry of Education and Health, below is a sketch I draw for it. How the Brazilian landscape architects deal with the harmony of botanical plants in their garden impress me a lot in this trip.
