This article is dedicated to the Santa Fe Cactus Rescue Project. Obie, Nancy and Joe, wish you could have seen this with us.
Last Saturday we took a bus over to San Miguel de Allende to see their botanical garden. El Charco del Ingenio sits outside of the city on a site combining a wetland, a canyon and an indigenous garden with cacti prominent in its plant palette.
It is a hot bright morning. We have no real idea of the botany in the area. Guanajuato is sparse in plant materials on the hills surrounding the city. San Miguel may be similar.
We are surprised by the straw covering the garden pathways. It smells sweet as we walk on in the late morning heat.
Stonework supports for a water wheel
And this is the area that most reminded us of the work of our friends John Oberhausen, Joe Newman and Nancy Lehrhaupt in the Santa Fe Cactus Rescue Project in New Mexico. El Charco del Ingenio is rescuing and propagating cactus varieties from the surrounding region. The size of the specimen and the breadth of plant materials in the project is impressive.
Some of the areas of collection represented are Queretaro, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Hidalgo.
Other areas displayed a structure and a type of decoration used by the indigenous people of the region. This was used as a funeral bier to carry the dead. The infrastructure is tightly woven branches decorated with pieces of coiled bark.
Arid beauty surrounded us in the flat light of noon.
Approaching the end of our walk the view opened to San Miguel and the mountains beyond.
MedFlies 