Chapter 2 of 24
Brazilian Plant
I began to discover our flora that I never saw in the Brazilian gardens. And I asked myself why we don't have those plants, those marvellous plants that I saw in the Botanical Garden of Dahlem. And when I came back in '29, I began to collect. My mother's garden - the garden of my family - she had enormous love for roses and carnations and other plants. But she understood the beauty of the philodendron, of the anthuriums, of many plants that I began to bring into our garden. And after two to three years, the garden was completely different because I was very much thrilled and the Brazilian plants gave me enormous emotion.
From that time I began to do excursions bringing all these things that I didn't know. And then, in the Botanical Garden of Rio I learned very much seeing the plants, the size of the trees, that I could then apply to gardens. I went to the Beaux Arts School where I studied three years general courses, and Lúcio Costa who was a Director, he told me it would be very good if I would work towards landscape architecture because nobody was doing this in Brazil. In that sense, I can tell that I was the first who began that career in Brazil, because it was in the hands of principally European firms and gardeners, much more interested in importing European plants or foreign plants as using Brazilian plants. I began to create gardens only in '32. Lúcio Costa was living in our street and once he saw a combination of plants that I did in the garden, he told me I would like very much if you would do a garden for a house I've finished for a client. And I did the first rough drafts and they were not good. But he told me they are very good, and I began like that.
In my life I was very lucky that I began in Rio to create a garden for the Education Ministry, and the rough drafts were made by Le Corbusier. Certainly the development was very much based on Lúcio Costa guidance and the other architects that made the part of that group - like Carlos Leon, Oscar Niemeyer, Eduardo Affonso Reidy, and at that period Le Corbusier came to Brazil and I learned very much hearing his way of thinking because he had such a poetical way of expressing himself. And I was hearing like somebody hears a music or a marvellous poem. I was learning from his knowledge. Because we inherit from other people that did architecture that we are dealing with art, we learn always when we are speaking together. Because we speak the same language.