Enter The Modernist Garden featuring the iconic design for which Burle Marx was famous: organic form of pavement, a mix of beautiful tropical plants and sculptural elements. Majestic royal palms, lush cycads, Swiss cheese plant(Monstera deliciosa) at monster size, philodendrons (including one he discovered and named for him), bromeliads and color galore such as a mix of hot pink Mussaenda philippica and coppery bromeliads in a sea of Cassandra ‘Orange Marmalade’ have become a tropical paradise outside the conservatory. Royal palms, the tallest at 35 feet, 30-foot queen palms from Brazil, 25-foot American Oil Palms (Attalea cohune), Chinese fan palm, triangle palm, Paurotis palm form a canopy in the Modernist garden.

A flashy yellow and red coleus ‘El Brighto’ hedge is outstanding and flamboyant as is its human inspiration. “Burle Marx used it all the time in his designs and at his own home,” says Todd Forrest, Head of Horticulture at NYBG.

Forrest has overseen this entire project for three years now. That includes conception, installation, on-going maintenance, consulting with landscape architect/Burle Marx protégé Raymond Jungles, working with the horticultural staff who grew the plants, the signage and assorted situations that arise and, after September 29, making sure everything goes to where it should.

Soon black and white swirls of pavement, representative of Burle Marx’s curvilinear gardens and hardscapes, lead to a water garden fed by a fountain embedded in a wall. The wall was fashioned after Marx’s original at Banco Safro in Brazil. Both iconic structures represent his penchant for designing and creating hardscapes, such as his famous mosaic walk at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Triangle palm (Dypsis decaryi), Paurotis palm (Aceolorraphe wrightii), traveler's palm (not actually a palm, Ravenala madagascarensis), and Cycad form the tree line behind the water feature. “Raymond thought that because of the line of tall conifers behind the fountain wall they provide a scale reference for the exhibition when placed between the wall and the conifers. Having tall palms in the long view provides that scale,” Forrest explains. “The wall depicts his abstract forms in art and landscape design. The neutral grey is a counterpoint for the colorful plants. The wall combines two features: sculptural and water elements.”

Raymond Jungles, FASLA, is the most accomplished tropical landscape architect, designing gardens in the Caribbean and Central and South America, Forrest says. “He came up with the basic design and we came up with the plant list.”

“Roberto Burle Marx was warm and welcoming and generous in knowledge and a pleasure. He was a great conservationist. He learned about these plants and often rescued them from crews who were making roads or other constructs. Many plants he rescued were not known to science. It gave him a knowledge of the complexity of Nature,” says Forrest. “At that time Brazil was run by a military dictator and Burle Marx made powerful and articulate pleas to conserve the forests. He was courageous and was a man of many colors: a landscape architect, a painter, jewelry maker, singer, entertainer. He was a total work of art.”

Says Forrest: “The sheer joy of the exhibition and the man himself is our nod to Roberto Burle Marx who shared our love for outstanding and unusual plants. It’s a lot of fun to watch reactions of people from all over the world who are amazed to see the exhibit.”

New York Botanical Garden: www.nybg.org