What would we lose if we lost Las Pozas?
Well, I would definitely put Edward James' garden
in the Top 10 Wonders of the World
We're going into a piece of jungle
through a choreographed set of parts
so in a sense that makes it a garden
It seems to revolve around this vision that he had
where he saw the whole cosmos ordered around all the different plants
everything ordered, and just with Beethoven's Eroica
and it seems like it's related directly to that experience
My name is Matthew Holmes
I am the Project Director for the project here in Las Pozas
the sculptural garden of Edward James in Xilitla
Who was Edward James?
One of these amazing group of eccentrics
that were able to do what they wanted to do
The son of an American, and a British woman
Amazing fortune from his father
He was involved with the Surrealists right from the '30s
and became very involved in that movement
He maintained a Dalí for a long time and also a Magritte
Maybe one of the most beautiful things of this garden is
that you can arrive, and suddenly, as adults
we're thrown back to being children again
It's an amazing place that allows us to look into ourselves
discover things that we might not discover otherwise
Sometimes I do feel
and here I'm going to sound slightly superstitious
but there's an "ángel de la guarda" in this place
It has its own sort of protective angel
The place is a labyrinth
The place is a place to get lost
We insist on having as little signage as possible because
the Foundation feels that would take away
from the experience of the garden
There's no question about him being humbled by the nature
and probably the event in 1962
where this freak snowstorm killed his massive collection of orchids
And that was one of the occasions that sort of brought him down to earth
and also probably made him rebel against it
and that's when he started doing his more organic architecture
as a way of combatting the nature: "I'm going to build it in concrete
so no frost will ever kill any of these things!"
There's an aggressive conversation between nature and the structures
The garden's in charge
We're just passing through
We often have to take hard decisions
Just here where we are standing we have a tree behind us
that was allowed to come through the concrete slab
through a circular hole
and it's starting to spill over the concrete
I believe so many Mexicans are installation artists
They have to make installations for the Day of the Dead
They're always creating installations depending on different events
and that allows for a certain creative freedom.
So this creates a very unique situation
where you have this amazing [rancho], this amazing landscape
and then this very creative, flexible workforce
So this will be an argument or a discussion
that will have to keep growing
Is it a garden, or is it nature?
I think if I was a spirit
even if I died all the way in Europe
I would try to make my way back here
I can't think of a better place to haunt
than this garden
This would be the place to be, if you were a good ghost