Yesterday I went to El Jardín Botánico de la Concepción outside
Málaga, España. We rode a bus for about twenty minutes from El Centro and when
we exited the highway we started driving all over the countryside. I think our
driver was confused, if not lost. We finally found the gardens, but it took
longer than twenty minutes.
The Botanical Garden of the Conception has
an interesting story. If I understood the guide correctly, because he was
speaking Spanish, a noble woman named Amalia Heredia knew of botanical gardens
all over Europe and asked herself, "Why not in Málaga?" So her
husband traveled around the continent and saw all styles of gardens. He decided
that the English style was most beautiful and so, on his return, constructed an
English botanical garden for his wife. They built a 'cottage' on the land and
lived there in the summer. After a few sales, the garden came into
the hands of the city of Málaga and was opened to the public. It now has 80,000
species of plants, a third of those found on earth.
I enjoyed walking through the gardens, under the shade of the huge trees. It was a very hot day, but several degrees cooler under the leaves, and I had a pleasant afternoon. There are fairly large rats living in the forests, but I only saw one and it ran away before I could take a picture. There are also tiny black squirrels and hundreds of birds, chattering. Waterfalls, tumbling over stones or falling from cliffs, add another layer to the music, and faint, like the alto part in my choir, is the whisper of the foliage. There were few flowers, as the blooming months are past, but the trees, bamboo beside spruce, were interesting enough. Hidden among the trees were also ruins of Roman times and beside the path was a small temple and amphitheatre. I would have spent more time there, but our tour ended and we had to leave.
The gardens were beautiful, but the most interesting fact was how they came to be established. Someone asked "Why not here?" And it made me realize that we limit ourselves because we assume we can't.
"I can't be a doctor. I can't go to
Laos. I can't make a difference."
What would happen if we were to ask the
same question - Why not? I believe we'd see that the excuses fall away. Most of
the time, we have no good reason.
So - Why not here? Why not you?
