墨西哥希利特拉花园

发布于：2023-05-14 21:04:53

Mexico Xilitla garden

位置：墨西哥

分类：花园

内容：实景照片

图片：8张

受伟大的建筑师、艺术家们和他的超现实主义朋友们的影响，爱德华▪ 詹姆斯先生在墨西哥的丛林中找到了一块80英亩的地用来建造活着的梦想，80英亩的乐园等待着变成一个超现实主义花园。建造过程花了大约40年，而且并没有完工。刚到这里的游客会搞不清楚其目的：不知道通向哪里的石阶、到处是路、拱门和雕塑。爱德华▪ 詹姆斯城堡成为了这片地区的一个地标以及最有名的旅游目的地。它是一个难以想象、无法理解的地方。

对于这片80英亩的空地，起初的规划是建造一栋退休住宅、一间富有异国情调的植物温室以及附近的兰花地。那年冬天，寒霜使所有的植物都冻死了。之后，所有植物都经过了精心挑选并且只使用当地的植物。最终，还添加了超现实主义的花园和动物园。如今，只剩下了一些刻有名字的笼子，没有动物。

尽管这并不是一个真正意义上的城堡，不像苏格兰城堡那样标准。当地居民却把它当作了城堡。詹姆斯十分关心自然和野生动物保护。当Plutarco（詹姆斯非常要好的朋友，负责城堡管理）和詹姆斯在墨西哥旅游时，他们听说了一个隐秘的峡谷——希利特拉，那里的兰花长得很好。自然而然，在他买下这里时，首先要做的便是保留下这些野生兰花并添加一些其他的异国植物。而我们都知道，这个计划最后由于自然原因夭折了。詹姆斯突然心血来潮，他决定建造一个伊甸园，所有的东西都可以在里面生长。除了种植植物外，他们还建造了许多类似树、植物和花的东西——这些东西可不会被寒霜冻死。

当你进入城堡时，你会发现大多空间没有任何功能。不像其他建筑，这建筑没有任何作用——这便是它的美所在。这就是城堡的独特之处：没有实用性的建筑，仅仅是主人的想象。而这个主人在这上面花费了他大量的财富和一生中的大部分时间。当他的财富被用光时，詹姆斯不得不出售一些他从1920年代开始购买的画作。关于工程的总花费还存在着争议，从500万美元到1500万美元不等。

译者: 蝈蝈

Inspired by great architects and artists such as Antoni Gaudí, Giovanni Baptista Piranesi, and Maurits Cornelis Escher and his surrealist friends Salvador Dalí, Leonora Carrington, and René Magritte, Sir Edward James found in Mexico, in the middle of the jungle, an opportunity to build a living dream — nearly 80 acres of paradise waiting to become a surreal garden.The construction took almost 40 years (until James passed away), and yet remains unfinished. A new visitor can’t tell what the purpose of the edification was: stairs leading to nowhere, infinite paths, arches, and sculptures all around.The Castle of Edward James has become a landmark and one of the top travel destinations in the region. It is a place hard to imagine and impossible to understand.

With 80 acres of possibilities, one of the first plans was to build a retirement house, an exotic plant greenhouse, and an adjacent orchid field. That same winter, the frost killed all that had been planted. Since then, all plants have been carefully selected, and only local species are used. Eventually, the surreal garden and zoo were added; nowadays, only a few cages with names remain, but no animals live there.Even though it is not properly a castle, like the ones you can find in Scotland, local inhabitants considered it one.

James had genuine concern for nature and wildlife preservation. When Plutarco (an intimate friend of James, who was in charge of the administration of the Castle) and James were traveling in Mexico, they heard about a hidden valley where orchids grew freely: Xilitla. Naturally, when he bought the place, the first intention was to keep the wild orchids and add other exotic species. As we already know, this plan was frustrated by nature itself.Propelled by a whim, James decided he wanted to build a Garden of Eden, where everything could grow. Besides all that was planted, they began to build things that looked like trees, plants or flowers — things that could not be killed by frost.

When you visit the Castle grounds, you realize most of the spaces don’t have any function at all. Unlike other constructions, this building is useless — and that’s its beauty. That’s why this Castle is something unique: an architecture with no practical utility, responding only to the fantasies of its owner, who spent most of his fortune and half of his life making it happen.When his fortune was finally coming to an end, James had to sell most of the paintings he had bought since the 1920s.There is a discrepancy about the total construction cost. It is said that it goes from $5 million to $15 million.