Secret garden, illegal garden, magic garden

On the south side of Philadelphia is a Magic Garden, and this "magic garden" was built both illegally and secretly in northern India. You give some people, actually not some people, just a couple of eccentric crazy people enough pieces of pottery and other "junk" and they'll build something magnificent.  It's sort of hard to believe something like this being "secret" in India. Clearly it wasn't a secret, but secret from people who had the power and authority to stop it before it had gone so far it was better to accept the outcome and help the guy finish the job. TPP's impression is that this is pretty cool both as a garden and as folk art. Now Mrs. Phactor can add this place to her bucket list of gardens to see before she dies. 

Stranger in a strange land - Magic Gardens

Without question BGT (Botanical Geek Tour) #4 included a range of gardens and garden personalities probably greater than the span of all gardens previously visited, no small number, and that was largely, but not wholly, because of the intriguing Magic Gardens.  When you're on a garden tour, how can you not look for some magic.  But nothing, nothing, nothing can prepare you for the strangeness, the audacity,  of Magic Gardens, the epic creation of 73 year old artist, Isaiah Zagas.  It's like falling down the rabbit hole and landing in a wonderland of mosaic sculpture, one that covers the entire inside and outside of a house, or two, and then flows rampantly into the patio, onto the sidewalk, overflowing and growing beyond eventually covering over 100 walls on Philadelphia's south side.  Magic Gardens is somewhere in the neighborhood of genius with a good measure of manic, compulsive crazy thrown in for added flavor.  At times you find a fragmented mosaic of yourself looking back from mirrored portions, and then you take a step back and a face suddenly resolves itself from the apparent chaos of pieces of china, mirror, tiles, bottles, and the like.  And a garden it is, fertile, sprouting, growing, rampant, more organic than its material components.  There's some flowers, you might imagine, or a starry, starry night.  Words do not do it justice because quite simply it is magical, and whimsical, and crazy, but if you get to Philly, don't miss it. Without question this is the weirdest, wonderful-est garden the Phactor has ever visited.  This puts a new spin on recycling.  

Botanical Geek Tour Report - Progress report

The fourth botanical geek tour is well underway, and it's been going very well.  The Phactor would have reported in already except the bloody hotel internet connection blocked access to signing on to the Phytophactor blog because it was an "adult" site?!  Apparently the algal orgy and some other blogs about plant reproduction tripped some type of nanny filter. So how has it gone.  Yesterday was spent at Longwood Garden, and this morning at Bartrum's Garden.  Suffice it to say, two more different gardens could hardly be described.  Longwood's extensive and precise gardens are quite magnificent, but for a sophisticated gardener and botanical tourist, nothing could beat Bartrum's, a tiny 300 year old oasis of a garden surrounded by tenement row houses.  That it survived at all is amazing.  Longwood is almost too perfect, but Bartrum's displays a casual neglect that only a garden of real gardening and botanical heritage could pull off.  As a crazy counterpoint to both was the Magic Garden on South St. in Philadelphia, which while not botanical, is called a garden nonetheless.  In terms of my progress report, we have eaten extremely well.  What remarkable things have we seen so far?  The oldest gingko in the USA grows in Bartrum's garden as well as a national champion yellowwood tree which was in full bloom (good timing that).  It's hard to know, but the most remarkable plant at Longwood garden was the biggest Cyas revoluta any of us had ever seen.  They grow so slowly, that one in our collection has barely changed in 30 years, but it was but a seedling compared to this specimen.  It's age?  Who knows?  200 years, 300 years?  Did the Phactor mention seafood?  Today's lunch was at Pearl's Oyster Bar in the Reading Terminal Market, a fantastic extravagance of culinary delights.  So more details to come.  Images to come.  Stay tuned.  Why the troops have even invaded Delaware to avoid the stoopid liquor laws of PA and get wine.  So there PA!  Is this what comes of being founded by Quakers?  Can't say.  Stay tuned.