Letter from Paradise

If the sun finally came out in Seattle, it's because I'm down in Mexico this week. Greetings from Rancho La Puerta, the oldest health spa in North America. The gardens are gorgeous, the air scented with honeysuckle and roses, and we're eating fabulous, healthy food mostly grown right here at the Ranch. 

I'm here to lecture about low-maintenance gardens and give a couple of gardening workshops, but mostly my daughter and I are hiking, swimming, taking yoga and enjoying the sun and all the interesting people from around the world who are guests and presenters at Rancho La Puerta this week.

Here's the natural landscape, with a wild, dry beauty of its own. The day starts (early) with a brisk hike up sacred Mt. Kuchuma before breakfast.

That's the dining hall in the background, behind undulating rivers of cacti and other drought-tolerant groundcovers.

One of the great joys of Rancho La Puerta is strolling the paths that wind through the gardens past masses of ice plant and evening primrose....birds are everywhere in this all-organic landscape

Mature trees offer welcome shade along the paths - the grounds are cleverly designed so we all walk miles through the gardens to classes, treatments, the dining hall and swim pools...

A bronze nudes meditates in the courtyard leading to the yoga studio

The gardens are casual, Baja-cottage style, but there's great artistry in the foliage colors, massing effects, and use of vertical elements, all placed so the guests feel nurtured, sheltered and enveloped in the fragrant, plantings....

Comments

[The Blackbird Sings]

It is truly beautiful - paradise indeed!

[Asics shoes]

very cool space! I love your taste and it looks like it'd be so much fun to poke around in there... I used to live in DE but am now in VA, but if I ever go back that way to visit family I'd love to see it in person :)

[keylogger Mac]

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