Built Work Images:

Before and After Images:

Naples, Florida 2009

The Brazilian Garden was inspired by the internationally famous garden making style of Roberto Burle Marx.  It displays a vibrant deference for Brazil’s passion for art in the landscape.  The interplay between people and plants creates an inimitable botanical, cultural, and educational venue for garden enthusiasts and botanists.  Brazil’s seven terrestrial ecosystems find refuge amidst the restored natural wetlands of Naples, Florida, and partake in both an aesthetic and cultural garden dialogue.

In 1993, a group of eight Naples residents founded Naples Botanical Garden with nothing more than the dream of creating a world-class botanical garden. In 2000, a generous donation enabled the purchase of an extraordinary 170-acre property, where an existing strip mall, parking lot and acre after acre of Melaleuca, Brazilian Pepper and other invasive species were removed and replaced by a combination of cultivated gardens and beautifully restored natural habitats.

In June 2008, Naples Botanical Garden closed to visitors and began its transformation with the installment of the first three of six gardens, the Children’s Garden, the Brazilian Garden and the Caribbean Garden.  The Brazilian Garden, which encompasses one acre of the Naples Botanical Garden, opened to the public on November 13, 2010.  Approximately 100,000 visitors have experienced the garden to date.

Naples Botanical Garden, as a whole, has recycled more than 75 percent of its construction waste, used more than 20 percent recycled building materials and maximized energy-efficient natural lighting.  The soil was supplied locally, further reducing the project’s ecological footprint.

Raymond Jungles, FASLA,  desired to create a bold and distinctively Brazilian garden, designed to emphasize the late Roberto Burle Marx’s prodigious, inventive legacy, humanistic spirit and love of plants.  The Brazilian Garden is intended to open viewers’ eyes to the poetry of landscape design.

Educating visitors about the incredible biodiversity of Brazil was a very significant goal for Raymond.  The Brazilian Garden affords visitors the chance to experience the art, design and plant palate emblematic of Brazil without ever leaving the United States.  It also gives Brazilians living in the United States a place to appreciate and celebrate their close-knit culture and share it with others.

Lawn and plaza areas were designed with the goal of providing venues for diverse cultural events, unbeknown to botanical gardens, including watercolor workshops, jazz concerts, yoga classes and movies in the garden.

Researching and selecting plant material indigenous to Brazil was a task Raymond became completely immersed in and challenged by. Many specimens needed approval by the Naples Botanical Garden horticultural staff to ensure the plants were of the region and were non-invasive.

The Naples Botanical Garden commissioned five internationally known landscape architects to design their respective gardens.  The need to seamlessly blend each garden and each designer’s aesthetics together proved challenging.  Raymond participated in several charrettes in order to achieve a consensus on the design direction for the master plan and periphery of each unique garden.

Raymond desired to design something that was easy on the eyes and easy on the earth.  The Brazilian Garden was designed to entice movement from the prow of the proposed visitor center.  Organic poured concrete walkways with a maximum slope of 1:20 lead the visitors up through Brazil’s seven terrestrial ecosystems toward the elevated water garden plaza.  These areas are accessible to all visitors, allowing them to interact with the garden, to smell and touch the plants.

Emphasis was placed on the conservation of Brazil’s natural systems, places where great mysteries abound.  All major Brazilian ecosystems are represented, displaying corresponding plant life as if it were in its natural habitat, ultimately assisting the plants in achieving their greatest growth characteristics.  Each of these ecosystems features plants with unique attributes, such as color, form, texture, fragrance, and medicinal purpose.  Brazilian palms and specimen trees have sculptural, cultural, and visual importance in the garden, many of which Burle Marx personally discovered on his excursions in the Brazilian wilderness or propagated at his nursery in Sitio Burle Marx.  Other native Brazilian plantings such as water plants, epiphytes, vines and orchids also accentuate areas throughout the garden.

By employing a distinctive use of space and scale, Raymond created peaceful drama from the Brazilian Garden’s focal point, the elevated water garden plaza set against the backdrop of a restored conservation area.  The plaza features an 8 x17 foot ceramic tile mural donated by the landscape architect, which is the only public Roberto Burle Marx mural in the United States.  The mural is the focal point and terminus of the programmed view from the proposed visitor center.  The blue sky reflects off of the placid black water of the upper water garden, which then tumbles down a multi-tiered cascading waterfall into the lower pond.

The plaza is a vibrant commonplace for all to gather and interact with the water garden.  The vine trellis structure will eventually shade the plaza with Red Jade vine.  Massive Victoria Amazonica leaves resemble floating stepping stones, visually leading visitors towards the infinity edge cascade.

The water garden elements were designed to accentuate and link the two neighboring bodies of natural water to the Brazilian Garden.  Influenced by the site’s unrivaled views of the surrounding native preserves, Raymond selected the site and elevated plaza in order to create a landscape which would add compelling interest without requiring the use of precious resources.

The overall design of the Brazilian Garden was inspired as much by Raymond’s knowledge of Brazilian flora as his artistic temperament.  As the sun sets behind the vine trellis on the plaza, the hues of the sky mimic the vibrancy of the mosaic tiles, and as the garden’s visual elements drift away, the auditory elements of water create a nighttime haven for those who find comfort in the darkness.  The Brazilian Garden is a sensory delight, a place for recreation, reflection and education for present and future garden visitors.